Of metal and flesh: the power of brotherhood
by endario
Summary: i was inspired to make this story after reading another fic by the name of fusion. many believe that there was only one race of Cybertronian. they were wrong. there was another race, a smaller race. one that was wiped out centuries ago, or were they? what if this race had been hiding on a planet many light years away.
1. Chapter 1 the beggining

AN: this is an adaptation of an AU that i read called Fusion. I can't remember who made it, but it was really good. Regardless, this is going to differ from the cannon, certain characters will or won't die, and certain events will play out differently. If you guys want any other autobots/decepticons to make appearances, ask for them, and i will do my best to include them.

"Autobots, roll out!" = normal voice

" _Decepticons, retreat!"_ over the comms

" **I got a bad feeling"** =telepathy/ Cybertronian

"Shit…"  = signing (will be used much more by Bumblebee and OC than others)

Jack always knew he was different… he was faster than the other kids, more durable, smarter, but most of all, much more mature for his age. He just, was better than kids his age… not to mention, he had a… quirk. His chest was metal. His entire torso was comprised of a smooth, shiny silver metal that looked like it was straight out of iron man. He could feel the wires that snaked through his chest, and could see a soft glow from a small opening in the center of his chest, that pulsed like a heartbeat.

"Jack! Greg! Time to get up!" Jack heard his mom call from the kitchen. Jack sighed as he got out of bed, got dressed, and left his room.

As he left his room, he saw the door opposite his open as well. Out stepped a lean, pale teenager with black hair and piercing blue eyes. This teen was Greg Darby, Jack's adopted younger brother. Greg was adopted by the darby's after his parents died in a house fire. Jack's mom, June darby was a close friend of Greg's parents. the reason June decided to adopt greg, was not due to that, however. It was in fact, because Greg had metal as well. Greg had a much smaller chest plate than jack, in fact, it only covered his breast, though it did look alike to Jacks in terms of physical attributes. He also had his entire left arm, made of the same metal. It was smooth, with wires visible at the joint. With small indents that glowed like his chest.

Jack and Greg made their way down to the kitchen table, both giving a form of greeting to their mother.

June smiled as she saw her two sons approach the table. She was really proud of both her sons, as they both were able to overcome the trauma that plagued their-

No, June thought to herself, her kids had overcome, and so would she.

Breakfast was a relatively quiet affair, but that was the norm for the family. Greg couldn't speak, as he had sustained an injury that damaged his vocal chords. Jack was not very social, even around his family, and quite preferred to eat in silence. June was more than happy to indulge her sons.

After breakfast was done, June gathered up the plates and took them over to the kitchen so she could wash them. As she was doing that… Greg and Jack were getting ready for school. They both hated school… Greg hated it because he was always picked on for being mute, and Jack was picked on for being his brother and standing up for him. The two brothers packed their lunches into their bags, and slung their bags over their shoulders. Waving to their mom, the boys set out for school…. Horrible horrible school.

As the boys walked to school, they struck up a silent conversation, and I do mean that literally. The boys were telepaths. Though they kept that to themselves, not even their mother knew, as they didn't want to be taken away by the government for testing, something that terrified the boys to no end.

" **So brother, what do you think we should do after school? Go to the park? Play video games? Fix the car?"** Greg asked his brother. Jack shook his head good naturedly, **"While, i have work today… so it will have to wait…"** Jack heard his brother sigh, and knew full well that his brother didn't approve of his job, at a fast food joint, the K.O. Burger. Greg thought his brothers talent was wasted on such a job. Jack could be a five star chef if he wanted. He had the skill to cook anything to perfection, and yet he wastes his skill on a job that doesn't even pay well.

The two boys reached the school, and we're greeted to the ugly sight of Vince, the meanest person in jasper high.

"Well. well, well. If it isn't the mute retard and his limp dick brother? I've missed our get togethers… so has my fists!" Vince snarled, trying to get a rise out of the two brothers, but as usual, they ignored him, they had stopped caring what people said about them a long time ago. Seeing that his insults were getting no where, Vince growled, and stormed off, most likely to find some other kids to attack. Greg sighed, looking at his brother with a look that clearly said, 'is he serious?'. Jack only sighed back, and nodded. Deciding to head to class before the bell rang, thus removing the chances of getting a detention for being late, Jack and Greg entered the school, but not before seeing a blue motorcycle, with a driver in full body leather, and a large red muscle car blaze down the road next to the school.

School was relatively boring to the two brothers, a few assignments to do, but nothing grade threatening. As the boys walked home, Jack bid farewell to his brother, and headed off to work. He was taking an extra shift so that he could have a bit more on hand in case they ever needed it. Greg decided to get a head start on his assignments, as he wanted to boost his grades, as he was starting to slip somewhat. Greg reached his house fairly quickly, didn't want Vince to find and beat him again, as he had many times before, and used his keys to get inside.

Once inside, he settled down to do his homework.

It was just after when jack would have finished work, that Greg felt an immense amount of fear and panic from his bond with his brother. Quickly reaching out with the bond, he asked his brother what was going on. All he got was more fear and anxiety, and a fear for purple cars.

Greg quickly honed in on Jack's mental signature, and rushed out the door.

Upon realizing that there was no direct road that would lead him to Jack, Greg decided to do the next best thing, run over the roofs. Most normal people wouldn't be capable of such feats, but the Darby boys were never truly normal. As Greg leaped across rooftop to rooftop, he began to mentally communicate with his brother, slowly but surely determining his position, and adjusting his trajectory accordingly.

Greg had reached the location of his brother… but was shocked at what he saw, giant robots, actual giant robots, one blue one, defending his brother, the two purple ones, aiming what looked like laser guns at his brother's protector. Remembering his brother's fear of the purple cars, Greg made an estimated guess, and chose his target.

{Arcee's POV}

I was prepared to defend the humans, the one who mounted me at the parking lot, and the innocent bystander, with my spark, when something unexpected happened. A human, a small fragile little human, gave a startling load war cry, as he jumped off the bridge above us, and crashed into one of the vehicons. The human gave another battle cry as he…. RIPPED IT'S HEAD CLEAN OFF! How in primus' name had the little fleshy managed that? The human turned his head to face me, his eyes angry, and i flinched. Was he going to kill me as well?

 **Well? What are you waiting for? Kill the other one! It was going to kill you, and my brother! Kill it!**

I almost stumbled as i heard a voice in my head, not unlike a com link. I raised a brow ridge at the human, had he said that. The human flinched, then nodded, that pointed his head at the remaining vehicon. With that said, I sprung into action as it raised it's blaster at the human who had killed its partner, I shuddered internally at the implications of what i had just thought.

As i began to battle the vehicon i noticed Bumblebee emerge from stasis, how had he been forgotten so easily, i thought. As we began to fight, I noticed the human's head up a large pipe out of the corner of my optic. Good i thought, now their out of the way, the real fight could begin.

{the next day, Jack's pov}

As school ended, and as Greg and i exited the building, i saw Raf, the boy i had met the other day, sitting against a tree. Smiling to myself, i motioned at greg to follow as i went to greet Raf.

Raf looked up, saw me and smiled, waving hello at us. "Hey Raf." i greeted.

"Hey jack! Hey greg!" Raf responded, eliciting a small wave from Greg, who seemed distracted by something. Paying my brother little mind, i turned my attention to Raf, "Hey Raf? I think we should not tell people about what happened last night, you agree?" Raf was about to answer, when Greg stepped forward, pointing at two vehicles approaching us. One was a yellow and black muscle car, clearly one of the robots from last night, the other, was a large, green SUV. most likely another robot. The car pulled right up to us, opening a door, and spoke in a strange voice,

" **Alright, the little one gets in with me, con killer, you get in the SUV, and the one who rode the motorcycle last time, well… Arcee's over there."** Raf turned to us, "he said that-" I put a hand on Raf's shoulder, "We understood him too." Raf's eyes widened, but nodded, getting in the yellow car. I turned to Greg, "So i guess you're 'Con killer'?" Greg thought for a moment, before nodding and walking over to the SUV.

I just hope this isn't a bad idea….

(Bulkhead's POV)

As the kid walked over to me, i began to wonder, what did 'bee mean by Con killer? Was he saying that this…. Human had killed a con? If so, that was both impressive and terrifying…

The kid had reached my door, and i opened it to allow him to enter, feeling a little unnerved at the possible killer in my passenger's seat.

I decided to introduce myself, as to not appear rude, "Hi. My name is Bulkhead. What's your name?" the human didn't respond, only giving my dashboard a little wave, before sitting back further in my seat. To say i was insulted was a bit of an understatement, i gave him my name, and he didn't feel bothered to give me his own? Arrogant much? Setting my anger aside, as i didn't want to make someone who could tear me to pieces apart mad, i decided to just start driving.

Silently, i commend Ratchet to let him know i was on my way, i started my way back to the base, with my still silent charge. The kid was really unnerving, he made no noise at all. To be honest, he reminds me of soundwave…

We were about halfway to base, when i decided to put on music. Finding a rock station, I cranked it up, and started jamming to it. It was going great, until the kid starting banging on my dashboard. I turned my attention to him, and he motioned to turn the volume down.

Turning the volume down, i turned my rear view mirror to face the kid, "You wanted the volume down? Why didn't you just say so?" i asked, a little peeved that he was still wouldn't talk to me. Then he looked at my dashboard, and he pulled his shirt's collar down, to reveal a long scar across his neck, stretching from collarbone to collarbone. It looked really painful, and i realized... He was like Bumblebee, he couldn't speak. But he actually worse off than 'Bee, cuz he had a way to communicate, with basic cybertronian morse code. But this child…. He had no way to speak to his family.

"Kid….. I'm sorry… i didn't know.." I felt really bad. That wound looked painful, and it looked OLD. he must have had it for years. I was pulled from my thoughts when the kid put his hand on my dashboard, rubbing it soothingly. I looked into his eyes, and saw a child, who was ok with who he was. If anything, he looked proud he had survived. I was taken out of my thoughts as we reached the base, and i felt the child's grip on my seat tighten, but then relax as the entrance to base was revealed. I just hoped that Ratchet wouldn't make too much of a fuss about the humans...


	2. Chapter 2 discovery

Hey everyone, Endario hear again. I feel that this needs to be said, I cannot guarantee a consistent upload schedule. I am a lazy bastard, who is still in highschool. I will not be working on my stories nonstop. I also have a question for you all, should I keep Miko human? Or make them into something more? I already have plans for Raf. Let me know in the comments. With that out of the way, I hope that you enjoy my latest chapter.

"Autobots, roll out!" = normal voice

" _Decepticons, retreat!"_ over the comms

" **I got a bad feeling"** =telepathy/ Cybertronian

"Shit…"  = signing (will be used much more by Bumblebee and OC than others)

\- (Third person POV, but focused on the Darby Boys)-

The three vehicles entered the base, rounding a curved hallway, and found themselves in a massive room. In this room was a large, giant robot sized workstation, complete with monitors, and what looked like machines used in science labs. (I have no better way to describe the main room, or Ratchet's lab) Working at said station was a large orange and white robot. It had bulky shoulders, and what looked like the screen of a heart monitor on both of its forearms. The robot turned to face the the robots in disguise, as the humans stepped away from them, to allow them to transform. It was then that Greg noticed, that there was a fourth person, a girl who accompanied his brother, on the Motorcycle. As the robots assumed their true forms, Jack and Greg took a minute to asses how human they looked. And how familiar…..

"Four? I thought there were only three!" The orange bot exclaimed, to which the motorcycle replied, "Haven't you heard, Ratchet? Humans multiply." The Darby boys snickered at the remark, while the girl looked incredibly flustered, while Raf, just looked lost.

The girl looked over at Bulkhead, and Greg could swear that he saw stars in her eyes.

"Hi there! I'm Miko, what's your name?! I bet you're a truck! NO! A monster truck! Do you ever use a wrecking ball as a punching bag!?" Everyone sighed at the newly dubbed Miko's enthusiasm.

Clearing his throat, Raf asked a question, directed to the orange mech, "If you guys are robots, who made you?" Ratchet scoffed at the boy's question, clearly taking offence to the thought of being someone's creation. Before Ratchet had the chance to retort, loud footsteps we heard coming from deeper in the base. After a few seconds, a towering robot emerged from the hallway. It was blue and red, with windows on it's chest, and exhaust columns protruding from it's back. (You know what Optimus looks like)

The massive being, spoke in a deep, baritone voice, "We are cyber-organic beings originating from the planet Cybertron. I am Optimus Prime, and these are my teammates, Bumblebee, Bulkhead, Arcee and Ratchet." The newly dubbed Optimus pointed to each of the other titans.

Jack and Greg were having a silent conversation, trying to determine why these beings felt so familiar, and had, for the most part, ignored the conversations led by Raf and Optimus. They did, however overhear about the war that had been going on for centuries, and felt a strange feeling in themselves, a mix of anger and pride. What was that about? The boys began to ponder what they had felt,

That was, until an alarm went off. Optimus deduced it to be Agent Fowler, their government liaison. This scared the brothers, what if this Fowler discovered their gifts? Would they be shipped off to a government research lab? They were ushered out of the room by Prime, who didn't wish for the agent to meet the children at this time.

Greg looked over to his brother, before tapping his temple twice, asking for a mental link. Jack nodded, and his eyes briefly glowed blue, which went unseen by the other children.

" **Do you think that this is a good idea? What if they find out about your chest, and my arm? We could be….. be…."** Jack put a soothing hand on his brother's flesh shoulder. **"As long as we don't attract attention to ourselves, the cloaking implant should work. Remember? We send out a mental block, that prevents people from noticing our…. Enhancements. As long as we keep our distance, we will be fine."** Greg nodded, feeling relieved that they would be safe. The brothers did not notice that Raf had observed the entire conversation, and noticed the emotions that flowed off the two teens. They seemed to be very stressed, unusually so. Raf could see the absolute terror in their eyes, but he couldn't understand why…

Agent Fowler spent a good couple of minutes yelling at Optimus about the incident involving the decepticons (This is still the pilot, you know which one), before warning them that if they couldn't handle it, he would. And with that, he left.

After the agent left the base, Bumblebee motioned for the kids to come out of hiding,

"Optimus, I am detecting a corrupted autobot signal…. It's Cliffjumper's" Ratchet's voice was filled with worry, and concern. Had Cliff survived? Or was this a decepticon trick? The hope in Arcee's optics was just too painful to bear. She turned to Optimus,

"Optimus, please. If there's any chance Cliff is still alive…."

"Autobots, prepare to roll out. Rachet, prepare sickbay, we may need it."

Ratchet spun up the ground-bridge, and the rest of the autobots transformed and drove through the portal.

The children, sans Greg and Jack, were flabbergasted at the display, while the Darby brothers felt it was scarily familiar, like they already knew it in their hearts…

" **Jack? You don't think…."** Greg started to ask,

" **Only one way to find out…"** Jack responded.

Nodding to his brother, Greg turned to the medic, waving to get his attention. The medic noticed the movement, and sighed, turning away from explaining to Raphael and Miko how the ground bridge worked,

"*sigh* Yes?" He asked, thoroughly fed up with humans at the moment,

"He wants you to scan his arm, his left one." Jack spoke on Greg's behalf, as he could not speak. Ratchet sighed again, not understanding why the left arm was more important than the right, or why he was even entertaining such an idea. Nevertheless, he initiated a simple scan, just to humor the mute teen, but what he found was startling. Cybertronian Alloy.

CYBERTRONIAN METAL! The child was made of metal! He was Cybertronian, but how.

The humans were snickering at the flabbergasted look on his face.

"I guess that settles it." Jack said, "I knew you guys looked familiar…" Jack proceeded to take off his shirt, revealing his metal torso. Greg deactivated his cloaking implant, revealing his metal arm.

Miko and Raf realized that these two brothers, were related to the robots that lived in this silo, Ratchet realized that he was looking at a pair of techno organic fusion components, a race that had been extinct for eons. These two were probably the last of their kind, and they had no idea.

Raf suddenly realized why Jack and Greg were so terrified, they were afraid of being taken away! They weren't fully human, so the government might try to take them away.

 _¨Optimus, I have something you need to see...¨_ Ratchet spoke into his comlink, and was going to explain that he had discovered an extinct species, but what he heard next was spark-stopping.

The inhuman growling of a terrorcon.

 _¨Ratchet, open the ground bridge, quickly!¨_ Optimus shouted into his com, to which the medic quickly complied, opening the swirling vortex.

Jack spared a look at Greg, almost as if asking a silent question. Greg nodded, and the two dashed through the portal, before Ratchet could even react.

Jack and Greg jumped through the portal, feeling a slight nausia, but found that it dissipated quickly. Greg looked to his brother, still shirtless, and gave a small bow, before activating a feature of his arm. With the sound of shifting metal, his arm began to change. In place of his wrist and hand, was now a long blade, a good 4 feet of hard, durable metal. Greg then dashed away with superhuman speed and grace, looking akin to a dancer as he flew through the air of the cave.

A Vehicon was firing at the smallest Autobot, hoping to wound the small, agile second-in-command. His concentration was cut off by a loud battle cry, then he saw nothing. His helm fell to the ground by his feet, dead. His comrades looked at his corpse in terror, as his killer was perched upon his shoulder. A small, human like thing gazed at them, before raising it´s blade arm. With a cry that was far too loud to have come from such a small body, the being charged. Four more Vehicons were no more. Their corpses fell to the ground, soaking it in Energon.

Megatron gazed upon the battle that raged around him, the tides were slowly turning in favor of the Autobots, despite his terrorcon warrior. The warlord was about to transform and make his way back to his warship, when he heard a thunderous battle cry. Megatron turned his helm to see four of his loyal troops cut down at the same time by a human!

Wait… that was no human, it was a techno organic! How in the name of Cybertron had Prime managed to get his servos on such a creature? They were extinct. Megatron also observed a second techno organic, using a form of chest cannon to dispatch more of his troops, the warlord then decided it was time to go, his terrorcon would deal with his adversary, he was sure of it.

-{With Optimus and the Autobots}-

The battle was long and grueling for the Autobots. There were hundreds of Decepticon drones to deal with, not to mention the undead corpse of the Autobot Cliffjumper.

The pain in Arcee's faceplate was spark breaking. Her second partner, who she thought she had lost, was still somewhat alive, but in the thrall of Megatron.

The battle was put on temporary hold, as a great battle cry was heard, and every helm, even Cliffjumper´s, was turned to find a human with a robotic arm slew four drones in the blink of an optic.

Bulkhead recognized the human as the same human, who not minutes before, was sitting in his seat. He sat in disbelief, the kid truly was a con killer… but how, and what exactly was he?

The others had similar reactions, except for Optimus Prime, for he knew of Techno Organics, his time in as a data clerk, meant that he knew a great deal about Cybertronian history. He knew that they were extinct. He had to ponder how such magnificent creatures could exist in a time like this, Cybertron was dead, there was no way for an extinct species like the techno organics to return… unless these two had been on Earth all along. Optimus let out a small gasp, as he recognized the two techno organics as two of the humans that arrived at base before Cliffjumper's signal was detected.

Speaking of Cliffjumper, he was currently being cornered by one of the techno organics… Jack, Optimus believed his name was. The young techno was slowly moving towards the terrorcon, speaking soothingly to him. As he approached the terrorcon the light in his chest began to glow and pulse periodically.

The eyes and the hole in cliff's chest began to pulse in tune with jack's pulses. Suddenly, there was a flash, blinding everyone on the cavern. A few vehicons fell and smashed on the hard, rock floor below.

As the light faded, a lone figure was seen.

The new transformer look like cliffjumper, but seemed a bit taller than usual, with a large silver chest piece, it was ornate, with gold and glass. The most noticeable part of the new transformer, was his eyes and bio lights. The were purple, but would shift to dark blue, then shift back. It was like the two colours were fighting each other for dominance. The being turned to look at the other techno organic, Greg. After a few silent moments, greg turned to Optimus, and nodded, as if to confirm that this new transformer was on their side. He then motioned to the still opened ground bridge, silently saying it was time to go. Optimus was inclined to agree, as the decepticons were beginning to recover from the flash of light and power.

-{Autobot base}-

As Ratchet watched the Autobots return through the ground bridge, he noticed two very important things. One, one of the techno organics was missing, two, cliffjumper had a silver chest piece.

Wait…. Could that be?

"please, tell me where to put myself down to be fixed… I can't stay fused for long." Cliffjumper's voice was strange, like it was two voices talking together in unison. But i realized the implications of what he had said, one of them was hurt, probably badly. Ratchet rushed over, and guided cliffjumper to the medical berth. After laying him down, cliff began to glow a soft silver, then there was a flash, and cliffjumper returned to normal… almost. There was a large hole in his chest, as well as a long slash on his chassis, but he was alive. The small techno organic, Jack, was panting as he lay on cliff's chassis.

" Ive siphoned out the dark energon, but his chassis is still damaged… he still needs help." and with that, Jack passed out, no doubt exhausted by the endeavour.

Greg jumped up, grabbed his brother off the wounded mech, then took his brother to a platform connected to the main terminal of the control center.

The Autobots turned to Greg, clearly expecting an explanation, all except for Bulkhead, who knew that Greg was incapable of talking.

Bumblebee looked at Cliffjumper, who was being hooked up to an IV by Ratchet, with Greg coming over to help, silently hooking Cliff up to various machines. The others were shocked that Greg knew just where to plug in each machine, and other things that only a medic should know.

Optimus approached the medic and his techno assistant, turning to the latter, he spoke,

¨can you tell us what your brother did? None of us have ever actually seen a techno organic such as yourselves.¨

¨…..¨ Greg did not respond, and just continued to work on the red mech.

When Optimus´ question appeared to be unanswered, Arcee stepped forward to demand that the fleshy answer her leader, but Bulkhead stopped her,

¨He's like Bee.¨ Bulkhead explained, ¨no voice. He´s got a wicked scar across his neck.¨

The others gasped at that, the child was wounded and mute? That was disturbing to know…

Resigned to the fact that they weren't going to get an explanation until Jack awoke, the Autobots watched as the techno organic ran diagnostic on Cliff´s vitals.

The young one was doing a praiseworthy job at fixing the wounded´s injuries, almost as if it was coded into him… interesting.

Hours passed, and the wounds sustained by Cliffjumper had been reduced to Energon stains, and a small soldering line across his chassis. With the most immediately wounded cared for, Greg turned his attention to the other Autobots. Despite the protests of most of the team, the techno organic quickly treated the wounds of the warriors. The only one who didn´t complain about this treatment was Optimus, who had recognized that the teen was in ¨Medic mode¨ which was a state of mind that medics and doctors from Cybertron could dive into. They would treat every wound they could find, like it would end the war. It was most common in minicon medics, as it would allow them to treat the larger wounds much faster, but the prime had seen Ratchet enter this mode a few times, and knew there was nothing that could be done or said, to quell the little medic until his job was done. Even Ratchet stayed clear of the youngling´s path, for even the doctor of doom did not want to anger a medic in full blown medic mode.

With the final repair being to the side of the prime´s helm, he had suffered a minor blow to the head, and his audio receptor was sparking slightly, the tiny medic finally snapped out of medic mode. Greg looked around, as if wondering what was happening, then realized he had gone into another transe. He when he realized he was standing on the Prime's shoulder, his embarrassment only grew.

Optimus held out his hand for the mini medic to climb onto to, which he accepted. As the prime let the small Cybertronian down next to his brother, Greg bowed to the prime, feeling embarrassed at what he had done. As if feeling the youngling´s emotions, Ratchet stepped over to comfort him.

¨Medic mode is nothing to be ashamed of, young medic. Infact, medic mode is what made me able to save young Bumblebee after the battle of Tyger Pax.¨ Greg looked to the yellow scout for confirmation, to which the scout nodded his head.

Feeling better about himself, Greg quickly checked his brother, before settling down next to him for a nap.

The autobots didn't exactly know what to think of the two techno organics, but they were grateful for them saving cliffjumper. They would let them sleep, then decide what to do with them later.


	3. Chapter 3 family

Howdy folks, Endario back again, and i feel really proud, this story has become my most popular yet. I know that 4 reviews and 4 follows isn´t a lot, but it´s a start for me, and i iz happy. Moving on, i want to respond to comments:

 **Rex Vong Thrawn** , i have plans for romances in my story, and I am a sucker for Jarcee. But i think that jack acting as a sparkling for Arcee and Cliffjumper is a good idea that i want to go through with, but i am undecided… oh well, i'll give it some thought. But yes, i have romances planned, like Optimus and Elita-1, which is basically cannon.

Anyway, i give you, Of Metal And Flesh, Chapter 3

"Autobots, roll out!" = normal voice

" _Decepticons, retreat!"_ over the comms

" **I got a bad feeling"** =telepathy/ Cybertronian

"Shit…"  = signing (will be used much more by Bumblebee and OC than others)

It was late when the Darby boys awoke, feeling refreshed and revitalized. As they woke up they realized that they had fallen asleep in an unknown place, with people they barely knew,

¨Man, Mum would kill us if she knew...¨ Jack whispered to Greg, who made a chuckling gesture at his brother. Jack could be a real comedian at times.

 **¨you got that right. She would throttle us for letting our guard down.¨** Greg replied.

Getting up, Greg noticed that the bots were for the most part, not there, Ratchet, was in his med bay, as were Arcee and Cliffjumper, but the rest were gone. Greg and Jack slowly made their way down the stairs, approaching the med bay, wanting to check on the red bot they saved. Said bot noticed his two saviors approaching him, and chuckled,

¨ well, well, well. If it isn´t my two techno saviors? How are you two?¨ Cliffjumper asked. The Two other titans heard, and turned to smile at the two techno organics, Ratchet was the first to speak,

" hello little medic, how are you, are your energon levels ok?"

Greg tilted his head, knowing what energon was, it was the lifeblood of Cybertronian life- wait, how DID he know that? He's only ever known these giants for about a day now, so how did he know?

The medic began to worry, why had the little one not responded yet. Energon deprivation was a serious matter, especially in smaller models.

Jack decided to answer for his brother, "actually Ratchet… we've never had energon…."

-{POV change}-

Optimus was returning from his patrol, the young techno organics the team had met weighed heavily on his processor. How had they survived all this time? They clearly had no prolonged contact with energon, their Bio lights were far too dull for that to be the case. He had to wonder who cared for the two younglings, surely they had to have some knowledge of Cybertronian biology, perhaps they were raised by another of their kind?

As Optimus pondered, he rode through the curving tunnel that led to the base's main room- the command center. He was taken out of his thoughts by the shout of his CMO

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU'VE NEVER HAD ENERGON!?"

Optimus sighed, it seemed that whoever was taking care of the twins, had no knowledge of their biology, if they had, they surely would have properly fed the two.

Optimus shifted into his bipedal form, silently cursing the knots in his wiring, they were incredibly painful when they built up to the point that the prime's had become. Nevertheless, the last of the primes walked into the main hall of the base… to find Ratchet trying to force feed the twins energon.

"You will take your energon, and you will LIKE IT!" the medic screamed, attempting to force the young boys to drink from the energon cube. Optimus let out a small chuckle, amused by the antics of the younglings. The medic had clearly taken the twins in as a part of their family unit, something that hadn't been done since Bumblebee. It was almost spark-warming to see Ratchet acting so passionately towards the young. It was like they were his own sparklings….

"Ratchet, please put the children down, I'm sure they will be much more accepting of energon if they can do it on their own terms." Optimus' deep, baritone voice rang through the chaos that was before him.

Almost instantly, the two young Cybertronians jumped from Ratchet's hold, and dashed over to Optimus, hiding behind his feet. The prime let out a small chuckle at the children's antics, finding it endearing. They had shown themselves to be capable of being very mature, it took mental fortitude to charge into a battlefield where the enemies were ten times your size. But it was relieving to see that they could still be children.

Optimus slowly stepped backwards, putting the children in front of him. He bent down and slowly picked up the children his his massive hand. He then walked over to the 'human area' that had been set up, with a few things that the bots had found in the storage room of the base. Once the children were there, the prime turned to Ratchet, and opened his servos, silently asking for the small cubes that Ratchet had been trying to feed the twins. The medic begrudgingly gave the energon to the prime, realizing that he had a much better chance of getting the techno organics to eat.

The prime set the cubes down in front of Jack and Greg.

"This is energon. It is the lifeblood of Cybertron. It acts as our blood, fuel and ammunition. All Cybertronians drink energon, as it is vital to our systems. You two may be part human, as Ratchet's scans suggest, but it may be very beneficial for you two to consume energon every once in awhile. Your bio lights are looking quite dull." The prime explained to Greg and Jack. Greg looked at Jack, silently asking if he trusted the prime, to which the other techno organic nodded. With that, the twins lifted their cubes, and took a drink.

The prime watched the reactions of the two younglings, and was amused to see the quick change of their attitude, clearly enjoying the taste of energon.

"This is the sweetest thing either of us have ever tasted!" Jack exclaimed. The four bots in the room shared a laugh at that, they never thought about how the techno organics had taste buds, and could taste things.

The day went on, and the four autobots greatly enjoyed the company of the two little Cybertronians, they were quite fun to be around, and the children were very happy to talk to people who understood them, even better than their mother did.

Arcee had an important question though,

" hey Jack and Greg, is your mother a techno organic?" the twins looked at each other, before Jack spoke, " We don't really know, she could be like Greg, able to disguise herself as a human, but she never told us she was, so we honestly don't know…"

The others began to worry, if these two had a human mother, and they got hurt, what would she do? Would she take them to the hospital, and have their hairitage found out? They knew that the government was adamant about Cybertronian tech being hidden from the rest of humanity, they would most likely be upset about the world learning about techno organic life.

Ratchet turned to his leader, "Optimus, perhaps we should inform the government about these two. It may also be best to ask that they stay at the base with us, for now at least."

The prime turned to observe the two younglings that had just recently entered their lives, they looked apprehensive. Clearly, they did not like the idea of the government knowing about them, which was fair. They were unique, and the government may want to study them. Not that the Autobots would allow that to happen, but the fear was still there.

"Jack, Greg, we have only known you for a short time, but you are one of us. We would never let you be taken by your government. You are always going to be safe here."

The Darby boys looked at Optimus with a look that radiated gratitude, not expecting the prime to immediately agree to protect them, they had only known them for about a day. He also wanted them to stay on base with them! That was amazing. Sure, they loved their mom, but she didn't understand them, not like the bots could. They were, for the most part, the same. They could answer their questions about themselves, and help them to grow.

Jack turned to Greg,

" **What do you think, brother? Is it a good idea? They know things we could only dream of."** Jack telepathed to his brother,

" **I think so. We should try to learn from them, be like them. For the first time, we have access to our heritage. I don't want to lose it."** Greg sent back.

Jack nodded, "Then that settles it." Jack turned to face the prime, "We will try to get our mom to agree to allow us to stay here, but she knows about our… gifts. We may have to tell her about you guys. Don't worry, she's kept us a secret for all these years, she'll have no problem keeping you guys a secret too."

Although unsure, Optimus inclined his head in agreement. If their carrier- rather, if their mother could keep them secret, he was certain she could keep his team safe.

"Very well. However, it is late. I shall be sending you both home with Arcee, who will be maintaining vehicle cover. If she is required to break cover to convince your carr- mother, then she is allowed to do so." Optimus' deep baritone sounded akin to a gavel, resonating absolute authority.

Arcee inclined her head, and bid her partner goodbye. She then shifted into vehicle mode, and moved towards the front entrance. The Darby boys bid the prime, the medic and his patient goodbye, then climbed onto Arcee.

The trio rode out of the base, towards Jasper, and the Darby household.

Arcee rolled into the garage of the Darby house, then felt the two techno organics dismount her. Arcee felt extremely grateful towards both of the boys, they had saved her partner, Cliffjumper, from being a zombie terrorcon, in the thrall of Megatron. Jack, had fused with Cliff, and syphoned the poison out of his systems, even at the risk of his own exposure. He brought Cliff back from the dead, and Greg had repaired his wounds. The two had given her her partner back, when she thought he was lost forever. These two were special, and she was willing to go to any length to ensure that they had the proper care they needed.

As the three waited for Ms. Darby to return from working at the hospital, Jack passed the time tinkering with the pedal bike that hung from the wall, and Greg was washing Arcee's alt mode, removing unwanted dirt and grime, as well as pieces of debris that clung to her.

Normally, Arcee would have blasted a hole through anyone that would dare to attempt to clean her, but with Greg, and Jack she felt oddly at peace. The boys emitted a calming aura about them. She felt comfortable with them, and felt that she could confide with both of them.

She also commended Greg, for using a gentle, warm spray, very unlike the harsh, cold spray of a car wash. Jack commented about how they hated cold water, it stung their metal, so they assumed she would as well. She assured them they were right.

As the three sat, chatting idly, a car approached the garage, and the duo instantly knew it was their mother.

June Darby stepped out of her car, upset. She knew her boys, and her boys were in trouble.

"Jackson Marko Darby! Gregory Laitos Darby! Explain why there is a motorcycle in our garage! Now… Greg? Your lights are brighter than before. Did something happen?" June went from being angry at her sons, but being very concerned about them at the drop of a hat. She only knew of one way for the lights to glow like that….

No, she thought, they couldn't have. Could they?

"Mom," Jack began, "I'll tell you about the motorcycle, but you need to know something else first."

Greg decided to reveal something to his mother that he never thought he could. After he realized that he had pushed his telepathy onto Arcee, he realized that he could, force others to hear him too.

" **Mom, it's Greg. i'm sorry for never telling you I could do this, but i was scared, and until recently, only thought it worked with Jack. but we have found someone who understands us, not only for who we are but for WHAT we are. They are like us, and they can help us to become stronger. It's the reason you noticed my lights are brighter, they fed me something that our biology was meant to have, but we never did.**

 **We need them, and they need us. They want us to ask you to allow us to stay partially full time at their base, which you would have access to. You just need to promise to not tell anyone."**

June gasped, hearing her mute son, for the first time. His voice was beautiful, rich and smooth, like velvet. She quickly got over her shock, and reviewed his words. They had found someone who could understand them? Did he mean…

June had to sit down. Her sons had discovered something like them, there were a few answers to that, but the most likely was…. Troubling.

"Mom? We want to stay with them, they understand us, and our biology. They can keep us healthy."

The two teenagers winced as their mother looked at them with a bittersweet smile, with tears in her eyes, "You better call every day."

Their eyes lit up in excitement, and Greg rushed over to give her a big bear hug, being mindful to watch his strength. The mother simply gave into the hug, Greg was not usually affectionate, so this was an occasion. Jack moved over to them, completing the family hug.


	4. Chapter 4 of masters and students

Hello, Endario here. This is probably my favourite story yet. And it has been doing well. I thank you all for your support. As of writing this, there are only 4 comments, but those comments help to keep me going. For that, i thank you all.

I was tempted to do a time skip, but decided to half it. I realized after adding Greg into the plot, that certain things will have to change, like how they discover the dark energon. So i am basically going to skip past the events of darkness rising, but i will be providing a summary of my events of what went down, after the last chapter.

Ratchet and Optimus discuss what Megatron was doing with dark energon

Megatron challenges Optimus, provides coordinates to the ravine they fought at in the show. Revives the dead. They fight Optimus. Optimus wins

Bulkhead accidentally brings Miko onto the warship. Damage the targeting systems

Kids Vs Soundwave at the radio telescope. (With Greg)

Megatron attacks Cybertron with dark energon.

Big space bridge battle. J and G can't help, because they need to breathe

Arcee and Jack have moment

Decepticons realize that Cliff is still alive.

Greg and jack get the all clear from the government to move in with the bots

And there we have it. That is my timeline for what happened, now keep in mind, i only did this because i discovered plot holes that i just didn't want to fix, like how megatron would challenge Optimus to the zombie fight. The story will now continue at the eposode Masters and students.

Keep in mind, i am changing aspects of the story, like when i saved Cliffjumper. I will be adding new characters to both rosters, as well as the possibility of Combinders. With that said, here is my newest chapter, Of metal and flesh, volume 4

"Autobots, roll out!" = normal voice

" _Decepticons, retreat!"_ over the comms

" **I got a bad feeling"** =telepathy

 **I am bumblebee** Cybertronian

"Shit…"  = signing (will be used much more by Bumblebee and OC than others)

Optimus gave a content sigh as he observed his team bringing in, and placing the appliances that the two techno organics would require. Agent Fowler had been generous enough to provide the bots with a form of stipendiary, which would be used for necessities and furniture for the boys. They had already set up a room to serve as their own. It was next to Arcee's and Cliffjumper's rooms. The two had practically jumped at the chance to be their guardians. It would seem that the two had formed very good attachments to both of them, and they were practically a quartette. The four did everything together, from drinking their energon, to going into recharge. They were quite the unit, almost like a strike team, Optimus mused.

Speaking of their resident techno twins, they were teaching Ratchet about their biology. Ratchet had surmised that the pair were not fully blooded techno organics, but rather, they were hybrids of techno organic and humans. As such, they had parts of their biology that was unknown to the medic entirely. It would seem that the old medic was quite at home with the two techno organics, despite his jaded view on humans. Perhaps, these two could melt the ice around his spark, much in the same way that Cliff had for Arcee.

Optimus realized that their other two charges, Miko and Raf, were not here. After mulling it over, he deduced that they had not arrived yet. Most likely because all his Autobots were here. Deciding that the two should be here to help Jack and Greg settle in, Optimus silently commed Ratchet, telling him where he was going. With that, Optimus set out, not using the groundbridge, as that was a waste of energon, to gather their two human charges.

The drive to Rafael's was rather quick, and fairly uneventful. Once he arrived, he used his comlink to message Raf, informing him that he was waiting. A couple minutes passed, and the small, twelve and a quarter year old emerged from his home. His eyes lit up upon seeing the prime. The youngling dashed over to the Peterbilt truck, climbing into the cab.

"Hello Optimus. I have to say, wasn't expecting you to pick me up. Is Bumblebee ok?"

The prime let out a rare chuckle, "Bumblebee is quite fine, Rafael. He is simply busy. I am here to bring you and Miko to the base." Satisfied with the answer, Rafael leaned back in his seat.

Miko's host parents house, was a considerable distance away from the Esquivel household.

Once they arrived, Raf got out of the cybertronian truck, and walked up to the host family of Miko's front door. Optimus had the idea to wait around the corner, so the children could enter his alt mode, without being seen by Miko's host family.

A few minutes passed by, and Optimus began to consider moving closer to see if he was needed, when Miko and Raf rounded the corner. Optimus quickly noticed the drop in mood, when Rafael left his cab, he had been very happy, ecstatic even. But the air had a depressing, almost suffocating overtone. The Prime opened his door, allowing the children to enter the warmth of his cab.

"Miko, Rafael. Are you two alright?" The prime's deep, soothing baritone voice was music to the stressed teenager and pre-teen, soothing their troubles.

"It's fine, big bot. Just had a family squabble Just want to go to base now, if thats ok with you, Boss Bot." The prime knew it was more that what she led on, but decided to let it go. There was no reason to drag things out, and upset the children further.

The way back to the base was rather uneventful, and the three took solace in the silence. But secretly, the children were this silent, because they could hear and feel the prime's mighty spark-beat. It sounded like a heart, only much more powerful, and had a mechanical hum to it. The children felt very calm in its presence. Though Optimus noticed the change of mood, from depressed to oddly calm, but didn't wish to comment, fearing to bring back the depressive mindset.

When they arrived at the base, the mood within Optimus' cab drastically improved. They practically lunged out of his alt mode. Miko ran up to Bulkhead, and latched onto his large, metal leg. Bulkhead, almost dropped the sofa he was carrying, only just managing to catch it before it smashed into the floor. He looked down, to find a sobbing Miko, clinging to his leg like her life depended upon it.

"M-Miko? Are you alright?" The wrecker's deep voice was as a muse to Miko's damaged mental state. She felt a lot calmer when in his presence.

"I'm…. I'm ok now, Bulk." she responded timidly.

Bulkhead wanted to ask her what had happened to her, she was clearly in a distressed mood, but his leader caught his attention.

Optimus shook his helm, silently telling his demolitionist to not push the subject. Bulkhead knew better than to second guess his leader, deciding to bring the subject up with him later.

"Bulk? Why are you carrying a sofa?" Miko questioned.

Optics lighting up at the chance to change the subject, Bulk told his charge that Greg and Jack are moving in with the autobots. Miko and Raf gasped, for different reasons.

Raf was happy for the two boys, they had found family. Miko was a little jealous. But kept it down. She shouldn't feel like that, the boys had found a place they could fit in with.

Once Miko dislodged herself from Bulkhead's foot, the green bot, gently placed the couch on the platform it was supposed to be on.

" **You are in pain. Why?"**

Miko jumped when she heard a voice in her head. It sounded young, but wise beyond its years. It was decidedly male, but had an aura of motherly warmth and concern. Miko whipped her head around, and noticed that Greg was there, staring at her. Miko stared at him, silently asking if he was the one who spoke to her,

" **Yes Miko, I spoke to you, please don't tell the others, only Arcee knows so far. I understand that the bots are trustworthy, but the fear is still there. Please, my friend, tell me why you are in pain. Both physical and emotional."**

Miko sighed and looked away, Greg wouldn't understand, it was too painful to talk about…

" **I understand Miko. You do not wish to talk about it. It is fine, but should you gather the courage to talk, I will listen, silently if I must."**

Miko jumped slightly at the fact that Greg could read her mind. But he didn't know why she was hurt, so he must have control of his powers. Relieved that her secret wasn't blown, Miko made her way up to the the human area, to sit next to Greg.

"So, where's Jack?" Miko asked. Indeed, he and Cliffjumper were the only ones not there.

"Jack has gone out, to get proper food for himself and Greg. Cliffjumper accompanied him. They should be back shortly."

As if on cue a red car came barreling through the entry tunnel, stopping just short of the prime's feet. The car's door opened, and jack emerged, carrying a load of groceries in his arms. Greg ran over, and took the rest out of Cliffjumper, allowing him to transform into bipedal mode.

"Hey everyone. How are you doing?" Jack asked.

"We are all doing well." Optimus replied, " I trust you and Cliffjumper retrieved enough food to last you and your brother for a whole month?"

Jack nodded his head in agreement.

"Yep, got everything we need. From tortillas to meat, we have enough to feed us for at least the month."

"Excellent. I recommend placing the perishables in the refrigerator immediately." Ratchet said to the young man. Jack nodded, and got to work, Greg following his lead.

Once the food had been stored away, the children decided to start of their science projects. They had the projects dues in a few days, and all this stuff with the bots had made them fall behind. Though they had all the materials, they just hadn't exactly had the time.

Miko was working on a model of the solar system, Raf was working on a volcano, but Jack and Greg were working on something quite unique indeed. After talking with Arcee, they had gotten permission to create a side car attachment for her alt mode. It would be made out of Cybertronian alloy, and would even be able to shift into armour for her, to help her deal with blasts from vehicons, while not slowing her down. They had gotten permission from Ratchet to use some alloy from the medlab, though he did not know exactly what they were building.

The construction of the side car was slow, with long breaks in between sessions to allow the alloy to cool, to not warp the metal, or otherwise damage or compromise the alloy.

The humans and techno organics were working hard on their projects, so hard they had been kind of neglecting their bots. Arcee already knew what the techno twins were doing, as it involved her, and they did ask her for measurements, so they could properly proportion the side car. But the other three were confused as to why the kids were ignoring them, so they went to find out.

" **Hey Raf? What are you doing?"** Bumblebee asked his young charge, to which the boy replied,

"Im working on my school science project. Its a model volcano."

" **Can I help?"** Bee asked.

"Sure! I could use the help." Raf responded. Bumblebee gave a small twitter of delight, and kneeled down to help keep the volcano steady. Bulkhead lumbered over to miko, also asking the young girl if she needed help. Miko jumped at the sudden noise, she was too distracted to hear him approach, but gave him the ok to help.

Cliffjumper came up to the two boys, and noticed that the colour scheme matched Arcee's.

"So, what are you boys making?" He asked, and per usual, Greg remained silent, and Jack responded,

"We are making a sidecar for Arcee. We realized that it would be awkward for us to both ride on Arcee, mostly because her seat is designed for one person. This way, should you be unavailable, Arcee could pick us both up safely. It will also be able to convert to armour to help Arcee. We also noticed that her amour is less dense than anyone else's. This will help her to shrug off lesser bolts, like from the drones. It's also very light, so it won't weigh her down."

The red mech took a moment to take that all in. Damn, he thought, these kids are really smart. And very considerate.

"Primus kids, you two should be working with Ratchet. Might be able to make armour for you both some day." Was Cliff's response. The two grinned, feeling proud that they had impressed their male guardian.

It was then, that the volcano that Rafael was building, exploded, covering Bumblebee in suds.

"WERE UNDER ATTACK!" They heard Ratchet screech from the other room. Everyone suppressed their snickers, the volcano sounded nothing like an energon blast. But they could not fault the medic for taking precautions.

The Autobot CMO and the prime burst into the room, weapons drawn, only to find the children, and their guardians peacefully working on their projects, and Bumblebee was covered helm to toe in soapy suds.

"W-What in the Allspark is going on in here?!" The medic exclaimed. The two withdrew their weapons, but the medic was still tense.

"It's our science projects. Sorry for the scare Ratchet…" Raf explained to the irate medic that the science fair was worth a big percent of their grade.

While the medic and the young genius argued the merits of having the bots help the humans with their homework, Optimus settled his gaze on the bases youngest inhabitants. Greg and Jack Darby had built a rather peculiar device. It had only one wheel, and was propped up by a large stack of bricks. The device was streamlined, with sharp, curved angles, and a sweeping bow. It looked like a chariot, the prime had learned what that was from observing what the humans called 'Movies'. But the most peculiar thing was that… it matched Arcee's colour scheme.

"Younglings." The prime called out to the young hybrids as he approached, his thunderous footsteps sent the tools around the device rattling. "What are you building?"

The two young Cybertronians looked up at the towering prime, and smiled,

"We are making a sidecar for Arcee. If we need to be picked up, and Cliff isn't available to help, Cee can use this to take us both home safely. It can also turn into armour for her, so she'll be safer from decepticon blasts. It's made out of Cyber alloys, the same stuff that you and i are made out of." Jack told the prime.

To say that Optimus was impressed at their ingenuity and dedication to their friend's wellbeing was an understatement. They could have done something simple, like the solar system model that Miko was making, but they decided to go out of their way to make something for Arcee.

"I am impressed at your dedication to helping your guardian, but i must stress that the public cannot know about our existence, that includes the alloys that comprise us." The prime was worried how the two would take this, even though they made this for Arcee, it was still a school project. But Greg waved his hand dismissively, and gesture to his left arm, and before the prime's optics, it suddenly looked like human flesh. He then pointed to the side car.

"Ah, I see. You can mask the alloy to appear to be a human substance. Impressive." Optimus complimented. The boys blushed, not entirely used to the praise. Cliffjumper nodded at his commander's statement,

"Yep, these two are impressive. Scrap, they even helped me with my tangled wiring. Those two are something special indeed." The boys began to grow, VERY embarrassed at the praise, because they got so little of it. The embarrassment became so much, that jack did something that he hadn't done in years, he suddenly disappeared.

"WHAT THE FRAG!?" Bulkhead yelled, having taken a moment from helping Miko to listen in on the praise that the boys were receiving, when he witnessed Jack disappear. The bots immediately went into panic mode. One of their own had suddenly disappeared, this was not good at all. Even Optimus was worried, on the outside, he appeared calm, but on the inside he was screaming bloody murder. Only Greg seemed calm, as he walked up to where his brother once stood, and smacked the air where his head would have been. The thing was, they heard a loud SMACK, and suddenly Jack was visible. Jack rubbed the back of his head, soothing the blossoming pain,

"I did it again, didn't I?" He asked. Greg nodded. Jack sighed, he had hoped that this problem had been solved... but clearly, the young hybrid hadn't solved the issue with his invisibility. He turned to the bots, and bowed.

"I am so sorry for scaring you all. I can't control my ability. It acts up when i'm stressed, embarrassed, or worked up about something. I'm sorry everyone."

As the bots recovered from their simultaneous spark-attacks, Raf walked over to the upset Jack.

Greg noticed that Raf was approaching, but thought little of it. Both hybrids were indeed shocked when the small human gave jack a big hug. Jack took a minute to assess what was going on, then knelt down, to properly return Raf's hug.

"Whatever the problem is, we'll help you." Raf whispered to Jack. "You're Not alone anymore."

Jack spent the next couple of minutes trying to quell his tears.

With what happened a few hours earlier in the back of everyone's minds and processors respectively, the humans and hybrids returned to work. Ratchet had attempted to assist the younglings, but stern looks from Cliffjumper, Optimus and Greg had silenced any help from the medic. It was nearing noon when the CMO discovered a signal, exposed energon.

"Optimus, I have detected exposed energon. On the move." Ratchet informed his commander.

"Cliffjumper, Greg, Bumblebee. You three and myself with investigate. Arcee, Bulkhead, continue to assist your charges with their science projects. Ratchet? Leave them be." Optimus's baritone command was met with affirmatives from Arcee and Bulkhead, and a groan of defeat from Ratchet. He had hoped to help the children with their science projects, although it was debatable whether the children would call it helping.

Jack sighed slightly, the only ones who noticed, were Arcee and Greg. While Jack understood the practicality of bringing the small, hard to shoot medic along with them, Jack wished he could go with them.

Arcee patted him on the head, lightly.

"Maybe next time, Jack." she said, soothingly. He nodded. Hoping she was right.

" **dont stress brother, i'll be back before you know it. Who knows, maybe with a good few weeks worth of Energon?"** Greg telepathed to his brother **.**

Jack nodded to his brother, but was still concerned, and sent a question through their mental link,

" **But how will you communicate with the rest of the team? Will you reveal our telepathy to the entire team?"**

Greg looked shifty, and Jack immediately caught on.

" **Greg, what did you DO?"** The taller twin asked, for which he got a subdued, small response,

" **Arcee knows, so does Miko… and I think Optimus suspects…"**

Jack looked stunned for a minute, and to the Autobots, it looked like the brothers were having a staring contest, but Arcee and Miko knew what was going on, and were curious to what they were talking abou-

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU TOLD THEM?!" Jack's thunderous roar sent a sudden jolt through everyone. How was something so small, able to be so loud. Greg looked saddened, as he gazed at the floor, then back to his brother,

" **We haven't exactly been subtle about it recently… i mean, even mom knows now… maybe it's time to change?"**

But Jack wasn't having it, "OH SURE, NOW THAT WE FINALLY KNOW WHAT THE PIT WE ARE, IT'S OK TO JUST THOUGH EVERY SECRET TO THE WIND. NO! THAT IS NOT HOW WE HAVE ROLLED FOR THE PAST 10 YEARS! HAVE YOU REALLY FORGOTTEN OUR VOW?"

Greg looked hurt, how could his brother assume he forget the vow? That was painful. He turned and looked at Optimus, silently begging to go through the groundbridge. The prime took a moment to collect himself, the one sided screaming match was unnerving, then motioned for them to go through the groundbridge.

Bumblebee and Cliffjumper nodded, and stepped towards the portal. Optimus gave Jack a look, no doubt disapproving how he yelled at his brother. Jack looked up at the prime, with anger in his eyes, but the red mech caught something else in his eyes, regret, and remorse. He was sorry for yelling at his brother, but couldn't apologise.

Optimus gave the youngling a small, encouraging, smile,

"We will talk later, Jack. for now, think over what is going on. You two can trust us with anything." Jack smiled half heartedly, knowing it to be true, but ashamed he did not trust them still.

"Autobots, Roll Out!" The prime commanded, and with that, Bumblebee and Optimus shifted into their car and truck modes respectively. Cliffjumper transformed, and opened his door, for Greg to enter. The Chosen autobots sped through the Groundbridge, to face the inside of a canyon.

Jack looked down, before walking over to his project, silently resuming his work on it.

Bulkhead and Miko looked at each other, asking themselves if they should try and get Jack to say something… but decided against it. It was clear that while he regretted his actions, there was still anger in him. That anger could be directed at anyone, now that Greg had gone with Prime.

Everyone in the base simultaneously agreed to give Jack his space, even Arcee.

Greg looked out of Cliffjumper's window, having never really been out of Jasper, he knew little of the surrounding world. The large, sheer cliffs were interesting to see, as the segments that signafied different time periods were evident. The irony of his current position was not lost on him, as Greg gave a small chuckle at the thought of Cliffjumper driving through something lined with steep rock faces.

Said red Mech caught on to what Greg was giggling about, and stifled a small chuckle of his own. "Yeah, yeah, very funny. My name is hilarious now."

Though he was trying to sound upset, Greg could hear the humor in his voice, which only caused him to giggle louder. The three vehicles approached the energon signal, only to have energon bolts bombard them from the cliff face. The Autobots all transformed, and skidded to a halt. Gazing up at the cliff, they saw that it was-

"SKYQUAKE?!" Cliffjumper exclaimed, "How in the allspark is he here?"

 **Who is that?** Bumblebee asked, clearly not knowing who the large seeker was,

Optimus responded to the young scout , "That is Skyquake, one of Megatron's strongest warriors. He is the brother of Dreadwing, a fearless warrior, it stands to reason that Skyquake was sent to this planet, in stasis. To be awakened, when his master found him."

"Indeed Optimus Prime! I shall destroy you in the name of my one, true master!"

Skyquake roared.

Sparing a look to the bottom of the canyon, Cliffjumper noticed Starscream's prone body.

Skyquake jumped down, pulling out his sword, the long blade shining in the sunlight.

"This is where the line of primes, ENDS!" The large seeker proclaimed, as he readied himself for combat.

"Skyquake, this war has gone on long enough, too many of our brothers and sisters, from both sides have been lost. I know that you are a warrior of honor, you can not be blind to Megatron's dishonour!" The prime called out to Skyquake, hoping to prevent spilling energon. Skyquake seemed to hesitate, but quickly refocused,

"I will not allow your deceit to cloud my resolve, Prime! Your Autobot lies will end here!"

Skyquake roared, and he lunged at the last prime.

Optimus shifted his left servo into a blade, his right servo into his path-blaster (double barreled long pistol). With his blade, he blocked Skyquake's sword, and with a grunt of effort, shoved the heavy blade away from his frame. The prime lifted his gun up to the decepticon, and fired two shots into his chest, sending the large seeker staggering backwards. The mighty soldier of Megatron stabilized his feet, and assumed a battle stance.

Cliffjumper and Bumblebee shifted their servos into blasters, prepared to help their leader, but Optimus would have none of it. "Negative, you two will not engage. I will face Skyquake myself."

The prime ordered, much to the protest of his soldiers. "But Optimus, he's huge! You need help."

Cliffjumper yelled. Bumblebee gave a buzz of agreement. Greg gave a nod of confirmation from atop Cliff's shoulder plate. He clenched his mechanical servo in anger. He would not allow the lies of a warlord to kill the prime. He was too honorable and kind to die like that.

Greg began to wonder how he could help, for he was small, even when compared to a regular decepticon, and this one was twice as large. Greg knew they could not simply beat this one down.

Suddenly, Greg was struck with an idea, but he would need time…

Optimus had not been idle as he spoke to his comrades, and neither was Skyquake. The two were engaged in a deadly dance of blades and blasters. The prime went in for a punch to the chassis of his foe, only for his opponent to catch his fist. Seizing the opportunity, the much larger mech swung at his foe's face. He smirked as the blow landed, slightly denting Optimus' faceplate. Again, Skyquake went for a blow to the head, but the prime had other ideas. Moments before the punch connected, Optimus threw his helm towards his foe's. Skyquake grunted in surprise at the hit, temporarily disoriented. Optimus capitalized on his foe's weakness, and executed a savage flurry of uppercuts to his chassis. Grabbing his helm, the prime pummeled the large mech, before throwing him into the canyon wall.

Turning to his comrades, the last hope of Cybertron spoke, "He is down, but he will recover,"

Turning slightly to the right, Optimus reached for his comm, "Ratchet, we require-"

The prime was cut off, as Skyquake had recovered, and had run his blade through the honorable mech.

Smirking, Skyquake felt assured that the prime would die, there was no medic to save him. He withdrew his blade, and made towards the remaining Autobots.

Cliffjumper set Greg to the side, slightly concerned when the boy barely moved. But Cliff was a warrior, and had been hardened over eons of war. Cliff rejoined Bumblebee, and prepared to fight the fierce decepticon warrior.

{POV Change. Focused on Greg}

Greg felt his heart stop, when he saw the blade. It went through his stomach- tank, Greg reminded himself. It was called a tank. That was certain to be fatal, if not treated by a medic.

Greg was a medic, but he was small, and Optimus was the largest of all the Autobots. And the most that Greg had ever repaired on the big guy was a few gashes and his audio receptor. This was a double open tear in Optimus' mesh, coupled with organ damage and internal bleeding. Could he even repair such a wound?

This wound does not have to be fatal, immediate repair recommended. Optimus Prime must not be allowed to perish. He is too important to the Autobot cause. Initiating Medic Modular Repair System. Medic mode engaged.

Greg shot towards the prime like a blaster bolt, racing past his guardian and Bumblebee as they did battle with the much larger Skyquake.

Those two will suffer major damage from such tactics, pity. The red one is quite favorable.

Greg had to wonder why he had thought that, did he think less of Bumblebee? Because he wasn't his guardian? 'No,' he thought, 'I couldn't… Could I?'

Greg had no time to ponder this voice, he had reached the prime. He jumped onto the primes large chassis, and braced himself for what he was about to do. He had to dive into Optimus's chest, to repair him from the inside.

Without wasting another moment, Greg plunged himself into the mech. Gripping to cables to not fall into the primes gears and other elements, Greg swung his way over to the prime's tank. Had he had the time, Greg would had marveled over the beauty of Cybertronian tech. It was a blend of organic and technological traits. It was vaguely box-like, with two bulges in different directions. The whole organ pulsed periodically, in tune with his sparkbeat. But Greg had no time to gaze, he had to fix da-OPTIMUS. He had to fix Optimus. Shifting his hand into a welder, Greg began to seal the breach in the tank. This would stop the energon loss, or at least slow it down. He was halfway through the job on the frontward facing gash, when he felt the prime begin to move. Thinking quickly, Greg extended a long, spindly extension off of his arm, with a needle on the end. Greg jabbed the prime, right in an energon line, which spread the low-grade sedative through his body. Once ensured that his patient was under control, he resumed his work.

With the front half of the tank repaired, Greg moved around the large cavity of his leader, arriving at the back. He quickly repaired the damage done to this half of the tank, and was satisfied with the repair job, Greg decided that he was going to fix the prime's back. But when he made his long way through the circuitry and mechanics of the much larger being, he was horrified with what he saw. More than a few of the prime's gears, wires, and other robotic things that Greg did not know what they where, had large gashes running right through. But the worst, was the prime's spine. The whole assemblage was torn. A jagged slash, running across the back strut. Wires on the inside of it were sparking violently. Steeling himself, Greg knew what he had to do. Greg focused on his body, willing for it to change, he imagined more arms to fix the prime. No, Greg realized, he did not do this because he was a prime. Greg was doing this because he loved Optimus, like one would a father.

So you finally accept your own feelings. Took you long enough.

Greg was worried about this voice in his head, but he had to fix his father figure.

Greg felt his body shifting, as metal began to sprout from his shoulders, long and spindly limbs began to take shape, wires twisting along to connect with the nerves. At the end of these arms, grew the same model of welder that Greg had used to repair the prime's tank. With determination in his eyes, Greg set out to fix his leader, his Prime, his Father.

With his human arm, Greg grabbed the flailing wires, and with his original Cybertronian arm, he deployed his welder, and began to weld the wires together. The two arms he grew were not idle though. As he fixed the wiring of the prime's spine, the other arms were busy, straightening out the back strut, and beginning to weld it shut. Eventually, Greg could afford to weld the remaining gap in Optimus' back. With arguably the hardest part of the job done, Greg sighed with relief.

Beginning to crawl out of the prime, Greg surveyed the damage done to the internals that he could not fix, formulating a plan to inform the other medic.

Greg emerged from his leader's torso, akin to spider squeezing through a tight crevice, mostly due to the additional limbs. Turning to address the final wound on Optimus, Greg began to weld the mesh, drawing it over the opening, Greg was finally done. With his leader saved, Greg allowed himself to relax for a minute. A loud crash to his left, pulled Greg out of his rest.

Turning to assess what happened, Greg saw his guardian on the ground, with Skyquake holding Bee by his neck. Greg quickly turned around to his prime. Drawing a needle out of his finger, Greg administered a counter to the sedative he gave the prime. Within seconds the prime groaned, and slowly opened his optics.

" **Easy optimus. You took a bad hit, and I couldn't fix everything… but you NEED to get up. Bee and Cliff need you. I have a plan, but I need your help."**

Optimus looked at the small medic perched on his chassis, before collecting himself, and nodding the affirmative. Slowly, the mighty prime rose to his feet. With Greg clutching to his large shoulder plate with all four arms, Optimus prime walked towards Skyquake, still recovering from both his wound, and the sedative.

"Skyquake!" Optimus roared, "Let my comrade go!"

Skyquake looked at the prime in shock, he was certain the prime was done for. Then he noticed the weld marks, then his optics wandered, and noticed the small being on the prime's shoulder, with metal arms…..

"Y-You possess a TECHNO ORGANIC?!" He exclaimed in absolute shock. Techno organics became extinct halfway through the war, and were rarely even seen throughout it. They were declared endangered before the war. How had the prime come across one here?!

Skyquake dropped Bumblebee in shock, which gave Greg the opening he needed.

Fast as lightning, Greg leaped off Optimus, and on his mental urging, his body sprouted large, mechanical avian wings. Flapping his wings twice, Greg flew up to the face height of both mechs. Greg curled up, gathering his dormant power, drawing from his very spark, the resolve to fix the wrongs Megatron has caused.

With his wings flared, and his muscles tensed, Greg sent out a pulse of energy, a flare of psychic energy which enveloped all four mechs.

" **Stop what you are doing, Skyquake. You are being manipulated, your faction's cause is a fabricated lie, perpetuated by Megatron. I can show you the truth. If you wish to see what truly has transpired, step forwards."** Greg's voice was heard by all four of the cybertronians, who were in awe at the power and wisdom that emanated from the small teen.

Skyquake hesitated for a moment, then stepped forwards.

Greg turned his head, to face Optimus,

" **I require your memories Opimus. Do you accept?"** He asked his leader. He would need the memories of someone who was the epitome of the Autobot cause. And Prime was it.

"If my memories will bring peace between us and an enemy, they by all means." He responded.

With the go ahead, Greg plunged Skyquake into his mental presence. As he was consumed by the void of Greg's mind, he was bombarded by memories, the prime's memory.

The beginning of the war. The prime's first kill. Terror of innocent, neutral bots, as they were gunned down by decepticons. His loss of Elita-1. Blitzwing's massacres. The poisoning of Cybertron, by Megatron. Metroplex's sacrifice. There was so much for Dreadwing to process, he was wrong. He was wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

" **Do you now see, Skyquake? The extent that Megatron went, to secure power? The millions of innocents, their sparks extinguished, by Megatron's hands."**

The voice of the techno organic was right. Megatron was evil.

The void that surrounded Skyquake faded, and his vision came back to him.

Skyquake bowed his head in shame,

"The decepticons… have committed unspeakable horrors. It is a faction i can no longer be a part-"

The large seeker was cut off, as Starscream had emerged from stasis lock, and heard the seeker renouncing the decepticons. Full of fury, he aimed his missile, and fired, right into the seeker's back.

Prime and the autobots watched in horror, as Skyquake fell to the ground, a large smoldering hole in his back.

A lone figure stood before a large pool of energon, a expancing world of metal and dust sprawled around it. The scenery around it seemed to be a perfect mix of the planet Earth, and a planet of metal. The few trees that littered the landscape were twisted, with spirals of steel and metal intermingling with the bark of the tree.

The figure was tall, its armor was elegant, and a pure form of white. Oh its back, rested a beautiful blade, onate and elegant. The figure's eyes shone with millennia of wisdom and knowledge.

Footsteps behind the figure brought it's attention to the approaching figure behind it. The second figure was smaller, more slender, and clearly female. Her color scheme was a dark and soothing mauve and gold. Upon her back, was a large hammer. The hammer had mechanisms that resided within the head of the hammer, which rotated at a constant rate.

" **Still gazing at the prime, Prima? Dearest Brother, you must know that your continued observation of him raises some** _ **Questions...**_ **"** the second figure asked, amusement in her voice.

The first figure, now dubbed Prima, chuckled,

" **No, my dear sister, I do not use the pool of sight, to gaze upon my descendant, Optimus Prime. Instead, I gaze upon his newest recruits. Come, gaze with me sister."**

The second figure came to the pool's edge, and gasped at what she saw.

" **Indeed, Solus. It would seem that the Autobots have stumbled upon two techno organics."**

Solus turned to her brother, **"But Prima, the techno organic race is extinct. How do these two exist?"**

" **The same way that Minicons survived long after Cybertron went dormant. We evolved to no longer require energon to survive."** A voice rang out. Prima and Solus turned their helms, to see a much smaller mech, about twice the size of the humans in the pool. He sat in a crossed legged stance, with a ball of energy surrounding him. His colour scheme was a mixture of green and blue.

" **Micronus. How nice of you to join us."** Solus said. Prima merely nodded his helm in greeting.

Micronus turned his attention to the pool before them, gazing softly at the two techo organics before him. After a few clicks, he spoke, **"These two have a great destiny ahead of them. They shall be as important to the war, as the last prime himself. Such is their fate."**

" **Agreed, they shall be bearers of great power, but this power will leave them pressured. They must be nurtured by the prime, and his subordinates, before they can accept their power."** Solus agreed.

" **Well. you better hope that they have the mettle, or else the precious Optimus might not be able to complete his task."** A dark voice rang out, filled with malice and hate.

The three primes, mentally sighed, before turning to greet the newest visitor to the pool.

" **Liege Maximo. Angry as always I see."**

The towering mech merely huffed, and nodded his helm in greeting.

" **The key, and the shield, WILL complete their destiny, they must."**


	5. Chapter 5 Scrapheap

AN: hello everyone, Endario here. I have decided, that after this chapter, i am going to take a short hiatus, or rather, i am not going to be putting my focus on story writing. I am sorry if this upsets anyone, but this is supposed to be my last year of school, and i need to pass all my courses. I also have some new commitments to take care of.

That being said, i am not going to let this story die, like the other ones. I have a google doc, with all the ideas that i have for this story, and let me tell you, the end is going to be a far departure from the canon episode. I will be introducing MANY new characters into the story, and if you think that the boys are too powerful, then just wait, because I am adding at least DOUBLE the amount of decepticons than there are going to be Autobots, and those aren't even going to be the only two factions. In short, I am going to have a very diverse cast of combatants, with a lot of character growth. I also have plans for many characters, and i will be mixing elements of G1, and the bayverse, and possibly others as well. That being said, if you have any ideas, for additional bots or cons, let me know in the comments, and i will get back to you with my answer.

One final note, the voice that Greg heard was supposed to be in a different font, but when i went back to read it, it wasn't. I don't know if I am the only one to see that, but i am going to change the dialog moving forwards.

One last thing, i do not own the name Skyrunner, it was a name used by Tactition101, who i asked to use the name for this story.

Without further adieu, I present, Of Metal and Flesh volume five, Scrapheap.

"Autobots, roll out!" = normal voice

" _Decepticons, retreat!"_ over the comms

" **I got a bad feeling"** =telepathy

 **I am bumblebee** Cybertronian

"Scrap…"  = signing (will be used much more by Bumblebee and OC than others)

Greg sighed, taking a swig of energon. He still couldn't get over Skyquake.

It had been a few days since the Autobots had put Skyquake to rest. The large seeker was buried in the canyon he died in. Greg had attempted to initiate repairs on him, but the mech was already dead when he tried. No matter how in depth the repairs, he could not bring a spark back to life.

The others had been worried about him, Ratchet especially. The grumpy, older medic knew what it was like to lose a patient, on his operating table. Arcee and Optimus were also very worried about the young techno organic, Arcee the most. The Arcee and Cliffjumper were very close to Greg and Jack, despite knowing them for a short time. They had a intimate level of understanding of how the others thought and operated. So to see Greg looking so lifeless, was concerning, to say the least.

Greg felt, deep in his spark, a burning hatred for Starscream, an emotion he had never really felt before. Sure, Greg had been mad before, and Vince certainly didn't make it easy to not want to punch him… but he had never really HATED someone. But there was no other was to describe what he felt towards the decepticon second in command.

Greg remembered what happened the moment he, Bee, Cliff, and Optimus prime returned from the canyon…

{Flashback}

Greg stepped through the groundbridge, feeling cold and empty. Having lost his patient, a decepticon who realized the error of his way. Jack immediately ran over and hugged his brother, and sent Greg what he had been feeling through their bond,

 **Sadness. Guilt. Regret. Sympathy. Comfort.**

Greg simply wilted in his brother's arms, and allowed himself to be comforted. Jack led his brother to the human platform of the base, where most of their appliances were being kept.

"Dude, what's wrong?" Miko had asked. Greg merely stayed silent. The girl made to ask him again, but Cliffjumper picked her up, the unexpected movement making her yelp.

"Greg just lost a patient… someone died on his operating table for the first time. He's more than a little shaken up right now." Cliff explained to her. The girl's eyes widened in shock, and looked at the distraught medic. His face looked lifeless, and had lines of tears going down his cheeks. The girl held a hand over her mouth, and as Cliffjumper put her down, she walked over to Greg, enveloping him in an uncharacteristically soft hug.

The bots each had their own reactions to Greg's grief. Arcee had hugged him, and kept hugging him until Cliffjumper had asked for him, then he had taken the boy on a long drive. Bulkhead headed to the S.A.F.E. room, which was their training quarters, to punch his frustrations away, all the while asking Primus why such a young sparkling had to be a medic frame. Bumblebee mostly stayed away from the distraught child, trying to suppress his sadness, an action not shared by Raf, who spend as much time as he could with Greg. Raf saw both boys as older brothers, and hated to see the young man so sad. Miko and Jack tried to distract the boy from his pain, playing video games with him, and Ratchet kept his distance, but keeping tabs on his techno counterpart.

Everyone knew that his patient had been a decepticon, as the briefing from prime had been given to agent Fowler. They had all overheard that Skyquake was turning away from Megatron… and how Starscream had killed him. Needless to say, both names had been wordlessly banned from the base.

Jack and Greg had to explain how Greg was able to both communicate with Optimus, and project his memories to Skyquake. After the explanation, which Fowler was present for, both he and the bots promised to keep them safe. Fowler even agreed to keep their telepathy a secret from his superiors, to quell the boy's fears of being taken away.

Though Greg wasn't exactly keen on talking at the moment...

{End flashback}

Greg took another sip of his energon, idly wondering where the others were. He figured that Optimus was in his quarters, working on the datapads he had hoarded in his room. Greg had, at one point, accidentally wandered into the prime's quarters, and seen the piles of datapads he had on his desk. He had apologized to the prime profusely, but the prime in question merely gave a small smile, and waved the boy off.

Bulk and Bee were probably either waiting for Miko and Raf to be let out of their houses, as it was Saturday, or in transit back to base. However, that still left his dual guardians unaccounted for. Looking to the side, Greg observed Ratchet, once again trying to fix the stupid computer systems. He chuckled slightly, or as best he could with his scar, it came out as a sort of short, rasping noise. Greg got up, grinned manically, and took a running start, jumping off the railing, onto Ratchet's forearm, thoroughly startling the medic.

"Primus, Greg! You nearly gave me a spark attack!" The older medic complained, to which the smaller healer turned around and gave a guilty smile.

Greg turned around to face the monitor in front of him. This infernal computer system had given the CMO a lot of trouble, so Greg decided to try to fix it. Focusing on his body, the boy felt cables extend from his back, and plugged themselves into the computer system. Greg concentrated, willing for the computer to change, for the Cybertronian coding and parts to merge with the human technology, like the elements that comprised himself.

Ratchet watched in interest, as the young healer plugged himself into the computer system, and idly wondered whether he should interfere or not. The older medic had never seen this method of communication with non sentient Cybertronian coding before, and it could be a cause for concern, especially considering the mental state of the youngling in question. But Ratchet decided to let the mechling be. If things seemed to bet bad, the medic would step in.

Ratchet was amazed when the boy, and the computer system started to glow, then he saw the computer start to shift, taking on a more angled, distinctly Cybertronian design. (Think of the Nemesis' computerbanks.)

Greg sighed, feeling drained, but happy. With the computers evolved, Ratchet should have far fewer problems with glitches and bugs. He didn't know how he did it, he only had a feeling he could help. Even with the datapads that Ratchet and Optimus had given the two teens, they still had much to learn about themselves. Such as how they could interact with technology around them. They seemed to have a connection with most technology, able to interact with it, no matter where it was from, Earth or Cybertron.

"Greg, scaring me halfway to the Allspark aside, thank you for upgrading the computers. I should have little problem with them now." Ratchet spoke to the small medic, his optics soft. Greg gave his fellow healer a thumbs up, his eyes bright for the first time in a while.

" **Your welcome."**

Ratchet flinched, he had never heard Greg's voice, and was unprepared for it. But after seeing the pained look return to Greg's face, Ratchet quickly composed himself,

"Don't worry about it, little one. I was just surprised."The elder medic spoke to his younger. Greg looked up at the bigger cybertronian with gratitude, feeling much better.

Suddenly, the comlink channel opened,

" _Ratchet, Cliff here, we couldn't find anything at the crash site, and our sensors have hit the blue, requesting bridge home."_ Cliff's voice rang through the comlink system. Greg jumped off Ratchet's arm, making his way to the a small console in the human area. This console was made by Greg and Ratchet, should a situation arise where Greg or Jack had to use the groundbridge controls.

Greg quickly input the coordinates of Cliffjumper, and gave Ratchet the all clear. The CMO pulled the lever down, activating the bridge. Moments later, Cliffjumper and Arcee came through the swirling, green vortex.

The bots both looked tired, and cold, with small spots of frost, covering their frames. Cliff walked with a slight limp, clearly his joint was weakened from the cold.

"Cliffjumper! Get to the med bay, now!" Ratchet yelled at the red mech.

Cliffjumper surprisingly didn't fight back against the medic, and limped over to the berth. Arcee helped him to the berth, and stood to the side.

Once he was there, Greg jumped down, and shifted the metal around Cliff's knee joint. Upon closer inspection, the circuits surrounding the knee, as well as the wires, were slightly frostbitten, but overall, he was fine. Just a few hours of rest, and a warm temperature to be applied to his leg. As Greg was doing this, Ratchet took the time to look over Arcee, and determined that she was fine.

" **So Cliff, what did you do? Why is one leg frosty, while the other isn't?"** Greg projected, the mental voice reaching all in the room. The two Autobots were surprised to hear Greg talk, not that the didn't know he could, after all, Arcee was the first to know. It was just that he haven't talked since Skyquake died. He wouldn't even talk to Jack in more than simple sentences. They then remembered his question.

Arcee bit back a laugh, and Cliffjumper looked around, desperate to not make optic contact with either medic.

"Cliff?" Ratchet demanded, stretching out the name, his tone leaving no room for argument.

Cliff sighed, "Ok! Ok! I got stuck, there was this burrow in the ground, and the ground was too thin… and my leg got stuck."

There was a long silence, until Jack, who no one had noticed relaxing in the armchair on the human platform, burst out into uncontrollable laughter. Cliff turned around, to stare at Jack feeling a little hurt that Jack was laughing at him. Jack quickly struggled to get himself in check,

"Im sorry Cliff, but that's hilarious." Jack took a running jump off of the platform, which startled the others as they had only seen Greg perform such feats, Jack was always much more laidback when it came to athleticism.

Jack landed next to Cliffjumper, putting a tiny dent in the berth. Jack clambered up Cliff's right arm, taking care to not step on the joints of his hand, or his elbow. When he reached the shoulder, Jack slowed down, and positioned himself so that he could stare into Cliff's optics. As Jack stared into the massive optics before him, he noticed something. It seemed like a trick of the light, but when Jack looked hard enough, he could see hints of purple in Cliffjumper's optics. It would only be there for a second, then it would be gone, but Jack saw it.

Jack gasped, involuntary flinching back, fearing that he hadn't truly saved Cliffjumper from the dark energon. Ratchet quickly caught on to what the young techno organic must have seen.

"Easy Jack. he's fine. The purple in his optics is just a side effect of the dark energon. I promise you, there is no dark energon in his system." The medic comforted the techno organic.

Jack sighed, feeling relieved. He patted Cliff on the shoulder,

"Sorry buddy. I've just never noticed it…" Jack said, feeling a little embarrassed, he usually wasn't that jumpy…

Cliff chuckled, before reaching with his left arm, and patted Jack on the head, softly.

"It's all good, little buddy. I understand. I freaked out a little when i first saw it myself."

He said, with a wink. Jack gave him a smile, and nuzzled the hand slightly. Greg and Jack never got a lot of affection, as their mother was always working, and they had never met Jack's father.

Arcee smiled at the scene in front of her. It warmed her spark to see Cliff acting so…. Parently towards Jack. Arcee knew that Cliff saw the boys as his sparklings, and to be honest, so did she. She knew that she and Cliff could never be spark-mates, it just wouldn't work, but they had a bond that was arguably stronger than a mate-bond. Being bound like a sparkmate bond, would only compromise themselves in the event they were captured.

The two of them had seen some of the experiments done by Shockwave, and others like him. They would no doubt, one day, attempt to use the bond as a gateway, not unlike a psychic patch.

Arcee was pulled out of her thoughts, when she felt a weight on her arm. Pulling her arm up and holding it sideways, she saw Greg, perched on her forearm. A long, prehensile tail, wrapped around her arm, protruded from his back, so he wouldn't fall off. Arcee gave Greg a light glare, not very amused to be used as a jungle gym, but couldn't keep her glare for long, as she stared into Greg's big, expressive eyes. And so she simply sighed, and reached out to pet Greg's head. Greg closed his eyes, reveling in the soft touch of Arcee's warm metal.

Ratchet gave a small smile, as he looked at the family in his medbay. Now, the entire team considered each other family, with Optimus as the father figure, Ratchet as an uncle, and the rest were a form of sibling, but Cliffjumper and Arcee were arguably the closest. If those two would finally sparkbond, Ratchet would be quite surprised, as they were quite adamant about such things.

Still, Ratchet could not hide his smile at the endearing scene before him. From his interactions with Greg, and the few with Jack, the medic had come to the realization that the boys were somewhat attention starved. Not in a neglectful way, mind you, but they had just never received much attention as children.

Ratchet silently used his optics to take a picture of the scene, then used the comlink system to send it to Optimus. The medic figured he would be happy to see this troops content.

What the medic hadn't expected, however, was for the prime to emerge from the depths of the base. The leader's gaze shifted towards the four partners, a soft smile gracing his faceplate. Optimus had seen what the death of Tailgate had done to Arcee, it had crippled her, and he had seen that the happy, trickster exterior that Cliffjumper exhibited was merely a mask he put up, to help cope with the death of his brother, Overdrive. It was very spark-warming to see the two able to smile sincerely.

Optimus walked over to Ratchet, and began to question his medic.

"Ratchet, old friend. Have we discovered anything else about our Artic find?"

The medic shook his head,

"I'm sorry Optimus, but we found nothing. Should we continue to search?" Ratchet personally didn't see any point, but believed the prime would want to be certain, that there was nothing that they could find, to help them discover what was in the large, frozen shut pod, that they had discovered in the arctic.

"I believe that that would be a sound course of action, Ratchet. Prepare the ground-bridge. We will set out, as soon as one of them is ready."

The medic nodded, "Very well. But take Arcee, Cliffjumper decided to be a scrap-head, and weakened his knee joints. He won't be much use, when he can't walk."

The prime nodded, full well knowing that there was something more to how Cliffjumper got hurt, but from the way Ratchet spoke, Optimus knew that it was something stupid, that could have been avoided.

As Ratchet opened the ground-bridge, the sound on engines came from the main entrance to the base, signalling that Bumblebee and Bulkhead had returned with their human charges. Ratchet let out a long sigh, he had learnt to coexist with Jack and Greg, but he still had trouble dealing with the other two. Raf wasn't nearly as bad as Miko, but Ratchet still felt a disconnect. And Miko was just annoying. The elder medic felt that the interactions he had had with Agent Fowler had tainted his view on humans in general, and he knew it was wrong to assume that every human that he met would be like Fowler, but he couldn't help it.

"Shouldn't they be in school?" Ratchet asked the prime, to which Miko replied,

"On Saturday?! Nope, we've got all day to spend with you, Doc-bot!" the others gave small chuckles at the tone that Miko used, clearly teasing the medic. Said medic merely sighed in defeat, knowing that Miko was only joking, but it was still annoying.

Greg sat back, and watched as his guardian and his Prime enter the groundbridge, and briefly wondered how he felt about them both. First was Arcee. And how he felt about her was simple enough. He considered her to be a surrogate mother, and he was pretty sure she felt the same about him. But the really question was about how he felt about Optimus. During the…. Event with Skyquake, Greg had realized that he thought of Optimus as a father. But he felt very similar feelings towards Cliffjumper. In fact, the fatherly connection was even stronger with the smaller mech, Greg realized. So, why did he view two separate bots as a father figure?

Greg couldn't make heads or tails of it.

"Greg! Bulkhead! Bumblebee! Here, now!" Ratchet called out to the three aforementioned autobots. Having been pulled from his thoughts, Greg made his way over to his senior on medicine.

" **Yes Ratchet?** " Greg asked, earning a slight gasp from Raf, who had never heard Greg's telepathic voice. Greg ignored the noise, but felt a little hurt, even though it's his own fault.

"Bulkhead and Bumblebee, i need some heavy lifting. Greg, you need to check the internals of the Ground-bridge controls. Can you do that?"

Greg immediately nodded, knowing full well what would happen to Arcee and Optimus if whatever was wrong with the bridge wasn't fixed. As the larger medic lead the others towards the actual groundbridge, Greg removed a panel from the side of the bridge controls, and entered the machine, even though it was just a machine, and thus, unlike the Autobot's, couldn't feel pain, Greg treated each cable and circuit like it came from a living Cybertronian. He simply couldn't help it. As Greg ventured deeper into the control, he noticed there were pieces of the computer that seemed to be torn apart, almost like they were being eaten. What was going on?

[POV CHANGE]

Rafiel made his way down the large corridore, not really knowing what to do. The pre-teen had origionally tried to find Bee's room, but got lost along the way. Raf had been to Bumblebee's room before, and liked how it was put together. It was big, it had to house a Cybertronian after all, but it was also a simple structure, with a small, -cybertronian wise anyway- desk, and a berth, built to Bumblebee's size. On the desk was a bunch of souvenirs, like a large rock, and what looked like a horn, or a servo. Raf had asked what it was, but Bee had climbed up, and refused to talk about it.

Suddenly, the sound of metal clinking against metal drew Raf's attention. Raf wheeled around, to see a small, round metal creature. It had large, blue eyes, and had six spindly legs. The creature approached Raf, curious of the strange creature in front of it. The thing brought it's head up to Raf's hand, seemed to sniff it, then cuddled with him, appearing completely passive. Rafiel chuckled at the strange, little robot.

"The Autobots never said anything about pets…" he said. Picking the small creature up, Raf tried to make his way back to the main hall, excited to show Bumblebee his new friend.

When Raf finally found his way back to the main hub, he found Ratchet, Bulkhead, and Bumblebee looking at various parts of the bridge, some of the pieces looked torn apart.

"Hey Guys! Look what I found!" the boy exclaimed. Ratchet, who was looking at a chewed circuit board, sighed aggressively,

"Where busy!" The irate medic began, but he turned to look at Raf, and his demeanor changed drastically,

"AHHHHHHH!" The medic yelled, with Bulkhead and Bumblebee quickly joining him, pointing their weapons at the boy, or more specifically, at the small creature in his arms.

"SCRAPLET! SCRAPLET!" Bulkhead screamed.

Miko rushed over to stand in front of Raf, and Jack made to move over to shield him as well, but Cliffjumper grasped him in one servo. When Jack turned to yell at Cliff to let him go, he saw that Cliff's eyes were distant, and he saw something he had never seen in his optics, Fear.

"Woah! Woah! Easy guys! What's gotten into you?" Miko demanded, shocked that the gentle giant that is Bulkhead was pointing his guns at RAF.

"That thing is the most vile, and dangerous thing to crawl upon the face of Cybertron!" Ratchet yelled at Miko, his attention focused only on the scraplet in Raf's arms.

Miko gave a small laugh, not believing that Ratchet was scared of such a tiny thing.

"Really? You guys are huge! Scrappy here is, well, tiny-"

" **AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"**

Miko was cut off, by a powerful, pained yell, clearly from Greg, as they didn't hear it, but felt it.

Everyone watched as Greg tore out of the Ground-bridge control system, with about a dozen scraplets swarming over him. A few of them were munching on long tendrils, that protruded from Greg's back, reminiscent of Soundwave's tentacles.

The scraplet in Raf's arms woke up, and saw it's brothers attacking Greg. it opened its mouth wide, allowing Miko and Raf to see the rows of razor sharp teeth. With a blood-chilling whirl, it's teeth began to spin, until it looked like a maw of death. The scraplet broke out of Raf's hold, and made a beeline towards Greg. Bulkhead and Bee finally broke out of their stupor, and began to fire at the small scraplet, determined to protect the small medic. Unfortunately, the small body of the scraplet made shooting it almost impossible, and before long, it had made its way to Greg. Greg had had enough of the little metal eaters, and began to try to fight back. He shifted his left arm into a circular saw, and turned his right arm into a long drill. Using his tendrils, Greg grabbed four scraplets, one in each tendril. With a grunt of effort, Greg slammed them into the ground, hard. The sound of metallic crunching made its way to everyone's ears. The four scraplets had been crushed so far, one could hardly recognize what they were before.

The bots could only sit and watch, the chance of shooting Greg was too great. The young medic was fighting valiantly, but was clearly losing. The boy had lost a lot of energon, and his movements were getting sloppy.

But something suprissing happened, the scraplet that was in Raf's arms, jumped onto Greg, and started to attack the other scraplets. By the time that anyone had the chance to comprehend what was happening, the rouge scraplet had eaten all the scraplets that had attacked Greg.

Greg fell to the ground, exhausted. Energon spilled freely from his wounds, large gashes lined his body. The strange scraplet that saved Greg wandered up to him, making strange clicking sounds. Greg sat there, understandably confused, before he decided to try to mimic the scraplet's sounds. The scraplet looked at Greg, before it bowed its head, and backed off a few feet.

Ratchet rushed forwards, scooping Greg up, and rushed him to the medbay.

Miko and Raf stood there, shocked at what had transpired. Miko had her hand over her mouth, seeing her friend in such a state was horrifying.

Ratchet hooked Greg up to an IV full of energon, and began to fix his wounds. Bit by bit, Greg's gashes were reduced to blunt lines that criss crossed his body.

"His wounds were luckily superficial, he will make a full recovery." Ratchet informed the rest of the team. Jack sighed in relief, he had felt some of his brother's pain through their bond, but was very glad that nothing too important had been damaged.

Miko and Raf both visibly untensed, relieved that their friend was ok. Bulkhead let out a breath he didn't know he was holding, and Bumblebee warbled in relief.

Cliffjumper looked at his smaller charge, his own pain felt numb compared to what his little sparkling must have felt.

"He will have to remain in stasis for now, he still needs to recover. But we have much more pressing matters." Ratchet said, to which the young humans were confused to what he was talking about.

"But Ratchet, all the scraplets are dead, except for the one that saved Greg" Miko said to the aforementioned medic.

"No Miko, those were just scouts. That pod was clearly a scraplet trap. There could be millions of them, and i'm sure that they will not be as passive as that one." Ratchet responded, pointing a finger at the small grey scraplet that was hovering over Greg, its small wing fluttering.

"Oh Great, they can fly" Miko muttered.

Bulkhead looked at Greg, seeing the extent of his wound,

"W-Well I say we bug out, and let them keep the damn place" He said, waving his servos.

"No!" Was Ratchet's immediate response, "if we leave now, not only will Greg die, he needs to stay still, lest he reopen his many wounds, and bleed to death. But if we leave, Arcee and Optimus will perish!" The wrecker flinched at that.

Jack looked faint, "So we would lose Greg and Arcee AND Optimus?!" He shouted. The medic gave a grim nod. "We must repair the ground-bridge, and get all the scraplets out of our base! And quickly."

Raf and Miko looked at each other, before nodding, "Let us help. We are not made of metal, so they won't hurt us." Miko said. Ratchet gave his agreement, citing how their fleshiness would give them a distinct advantage over the bots or Jack. Jack took point at the entrance to the main hub, while Miko and Raf ventured into the depths of the base.

Jack decided he would take no chances, and began to change his body. Long, thick arms sprung out of his back, and began to fold out, to reveal numerous blasters lining a thick plate of cybersteel. From both his arms, different parts began to fold out, changing into what looked like a small missile launcher, a gatling gun and various cables with bladed melee weapons, ranging from saws, to drills, and even axe heads. It was clear that Jack wasn't taking any chances, he would not allow these… things to hurt HIS family. The small scraplet, that had been watching Greg, made his way over to Jack, and started making various clicking calls. Before long, scraplets were making their way over to them. Jack powered up his weapons, his saws spinning, before the small scraplet, perched on one of his back extension, whirled it's teeth, and the other scraplets bowed their heads.

Jack looked genuinely surprised, before the scraplets took notice of the Autobot symbol on Jack, and on the bots behind him. Without missing a beat, every single one of the scraplets created an autobot symbol on top of their head. Their main colour also changed, to a dark red, almost maroon.

The red scraplets turned around, and prepared for battle. Their teeth whirling like some for of grim, tribal drum-beat.

"Ok," Jack said, a small smirk on his face, "Let's do this." Getting ready to fight for his friends.

[With Miko and Raf]

MIko and Raf ran through the various large tunnels that comprised the base. They had been informed by Ratchet that there had to be a leak in the groundbridge powerline, and were doing their best to find it. Miko was wielding a large, slightly dented pipe, and Raf was carrying a small, portable, human sized welder, given to him by Ratchet.

The two humans were having no luck in locating the breach in the powerline, and were starting to stress. They knew the consequences of failure, and vowed to not fail the bots. Miko kept seeing the prone body of Greg, precious energon leaking from him like a broken faucet. She knew she would be having nightmares about that for a while, but she steeled herself, she had to be strong. For Greg, for Jack, for Raf, for the bots.

"Miko?" Raf called tentatively, not wanting to scare his teammate, "D-Do you think that Greg will be ok?" the young boy was scared, he had never seen violence like that before, and it scared the wits out of him.

Miko took a second to collect herself, before she replied, "Raf…. Greg will be ok. Do you know why?" She asked, "Because we are going to find the leak, plug it, and get these stupid scraplets out of here."

Raf gave a shaky nod, still scared, but determined to save Greg, along with the rest of the team.

"Look!" Miko exclaimed, seeing a small pool of energon, and above it, a small swarm of scraplets. Miko dashed forwards, and swung her pipe. Half the scraplets fell with the first swing, and Miko kept swinging until there were no scraplets on the wall at all. Raf then came forwards, priming his welder. As Miko stood back, brandishing her pipe to thwart any scraplets who wanted to ruin their plan, Raf welded the leak shut. Giving a small shout of success, the two humans ran back as fast as they could, who knew how long the bots could hold on.

[Back with the bots and Jack]

If the scraplets before were just scouts, then they had invoked the soldiers. Jack was suddenly being swarmed by the thousands of grey scraplets, with the red autobot scraplets valiantly trying to safeguard their comrade. Jack launched an offensive, his saws slashing in random directions, hitting many scraplets, but ultimately doing minor damage. With the multiple blasters at his disposal, Jack send out a volley of blaster fire, the shot bursting upon impact, doing massive damage in medium areas. Jack let out a battle-cry, as he burned hundreds of scraplets to the ground.

"RAAAAHHHHH!"

Jack was tearing through the scraplets as hard as he could, but they were taking their toll on Jack. His saws had been torn apart, no longer working, and his drills were pretty bent, and out of shape. His axe heads sported multiple cracks along the blades. Overall, Jack was struggling.

Needing to rest a little, Jack backed off, and the Auto-scraplets took this as a call to charge. The grey scraplets outnumbered the red ones by a huge amount, but the auto-scraplets fought with fury and determination never before seen by the autobots, or Jack. while the auto-scraplets lost a few, dropping from around 200 to about 180, the enemy had lost hundreds by the rival scraplets alone, nevermind the many that Jack had killed.

Jack leaped forwards again, and the Auto-scraplets backed off, knowing what he could do. Jack primed his weapons, and the cycle began anew. Over time, however, the scraplets began to overwhelm Jack, who was beginning to feel drained, before the monsters could descend to eat him, however, the Autobots began to blast away at the hoard. Little by little, the scraplets were turned to scrap metal, and the wave ended.

" *Huff* *Huff* Is that all of them?" Jack painted, feeling exhausted. Ratchet shook his head, his face grim.

"I am sorry Jack, but they were not even half the swarm. We have a lot to go…"

The young Techno organic sighed heavily, the fight having taken a toll on his body. Ratchet decided it was time to bring an experiment into the field testing faze.

"Jack, come here." The medic was strangely soft when he called for the young man. Jack turned his head, hesitated, then walked over to his medic. The Auto-scraplets remained where they were, standing guard to safeguard their comrades.

Ratchet pulled out a syringe of energon, and presented it to Jack,

"This is what I call, concentrated energon. It is only in its testing faze, but it would seem that this is needed now. After administration, you should be back up to near full capacity, and ready to continue. Sadly, I only have 5 vials of this concentrated energon that can be used on you, so we have to use it sparingly."

The medic lowered himself to be on eye level with Jack,

"Jack, do you trust me?" He asked, holding out his hand for Jack to climb on. Jack hesitated, before deciding to trust the medic. He climbed on to the medic's servo, and gave him a nod of confirmation. Ratchet gave him a comforting smile, before he slid the needle into Jack's skin.

Jack felt a tingling sensation, that started at the injection point, and began to spread, growing stronger as it did so. Soon Jack felt like his entire body was being consumed by fire, but it felt, felt so GOOD. Jack felt like he could take on the entire decepticon army, by himself!

Jack jumped down, landing with a small crash, denting the floor slightly, before charging over to where the friendly scraplets where. Feeling revitalized, Jack decided to make an upgrade. The protrusions on his back began to thicken, and eventually split into four. Large, spike like growths spread down his spine, electricity arcing from point to point. A long, segmented, draconic looking tail extended from his lower back, with a large cannon like tip to it. The tip of the cannon glowed a hot red, like it was heating to the point of melting, with thick bouts of steam.

From his left shoulder, a large assemblage of pipes and wires began to grow, taking the shape of a long barrel, with pulsating lights blinking across the length. From his right, a large arm like appendage jutted out. It had the characteristics of an automated assembly arm, but at the 'hand', things got crazy. It was large, seemingly too heavy to fit on the relatively slim arm, with three large 'fingers' that emerged from the tip.

These fingers were thing at the base, but grew wider and flatter the further along, and curved inwards a bit. The three fingers shifted back and forth, in and out, and in the empty spherical gape made by the fingers, a large ball of energy was forming.

Two rows emerged from Jack's back, with small holes drilled into it, only to be filled by rockets.

Finally, Jack's jaw began to grow metal, forming something akin to a mouthplate, or guard. It had blunt teeth on the upper edge of the plate.

Jack let out a roar of triumph, feeling like the king of the world, a roar shared by the scraplets, almost like they were proud of the upgrade. The autobots stood in awe at the change of their comrade. Cliffjumper was especially proud of his charge.

As Jack readied himself for combat, from the depths of the base, came the tell-tale whirling of scraplets. The Auto-scraplets hissed angrily, their hate made evident by the few scraps of their combatants being quickly consumed by the red machines.

"I honestly don't know what has caused these scraplets to assist us, but i am glad they are with us. Their fury seams to know no bounds..." Ratchet said to Bulkhead, who nodded in agreement.

Suddenly, without warning, a new wave of scraplets surged forwards, looking like a grey wave of teeth and death. Jack gave a yell as he charged forwards, his wall of blasters firing into the mass of scraplets. The beasts dropped like flies as they faced the formidable firepower that Jack was wielding, and many in his direct path were completely incinerated. Jack's radius and range was vast, in an almost 120o cone in front of him. The center of the cone was take care of by his large pipe like cannon, which fired large explosive projectiles, and the strange 'hand cannon' which originated from his right shoulder, and fired highly magnetized balls of energy at the scraplets, which would explode outwards. Roughly fifteen degrees on either side of this, was covered by each of the extension on his back. The sheer multitude of blasters was more than enough to reduce the scraplets to scrap metal. The remaining left was being covered by Jack's tail, with its ability to spew molten scrap that would burn any scraplet, or bot for that matter, to molten slag. The right was covered by the missile launchers that sprung from his back.

The bugs on the sides of this cone of death, however, had to fight the Auto-scraplets, and the Autobots. With the suppressing fire that Bulk and Bee were providing, the Auto-scraplets had a much easier time fighting their rivals. With the scraplets kept at bay, Ratchet focused his work on the repairs of both Cliffjumper, and Greg. the two were much better than they were before, but they were still in no condition to fight, Greg especially. The young medic was in pretty bad shape, not definitely fatal, but destructive enough to be of priority for repair. Cliffjumper was also in bad shape, but it was honestly just a matter of time until he was better, his metal was cold, slightly warped, and brittle. As long as he doesn't do any extensive movements, he'll be fine.

Just as the swarm of scraplets backed off, the human children made themselves known.

"Ratchet, the bridge is ready! Fire it up!" Miko yelled at the grumpy medic, before screeching at the red scraplets that hovered next to Jack. before Miko could wildly swing her pipe at them, a single, grey scraplet decided that these new things, that looked like the tasty things, WERE tasty things. The scraplet charged at Miko, who shrieked again, only to be saved, when a red scraplet surged forwards, and ate the grey scraplet. Miko stared in awe, at the supposed monster that had just saved her life, when Ratchet let out a pained scream.

Miko and Raf watched in horror, as the remaining hoard of scraplets had snuck in, using the roof as cover, and had descended on the medic, covering his bright paint completely. The medic's scream of pain, as his outer shell was eaten away at, was drowned out by the sounds of the other three autobots, for they too were under siege by the demonic vermin. The Auto-scraplets tried their best to defend their allies, but to no avail, there were just to many.

The original auto scraplet, the first, flew to his king, the one he had saved hours before, the one who had reached out with his mind, and touched the scraplet's own mind and spark.

" **Wake. Wake. Great King. You must awaken. Allies in danger. Subjects at risk. Please Great King. Save Them. Save us, Great King."**

As the scraplet tried to reach his king, Jack had been moving to save the Autobots, his weapons targeting the small metal eaters. Eventually, the horde of monsters took notice of him, and swarmed him too. Jack let out a scream, as his body was devoured by the small monsters.

"JACK!" Miko screamed, dropping her pipe, clattering to the floor.

Jack's agonising scream was heard throughout the entire base, including the medbay.

The small scraplet witnessed his lord's eyes open, devoid of pupils, his eyes pure black. From the king, many tendrils shot out, one reaching the original Auto-scraplet.

The scraplet flinched, before he felt the presence of his king,

" **My faithful warriors. It is time for your evolution. You shall become more than what you were before, but you shall never be the same again. Do you accept this burden, my loyal Auto-scraplets?"** The king's mental voice was heard by every scraplet who had aligned with the autobots. All the Auto-scraplets let out a shrill cry, conforming to their king that this was what they wanted.

" **Very well, my knights. ARISE, as the first of a new species, ARISE, MY SCRAPMAKER KNIGHTS!"** The king called out to his subjects, as his tendrils attached to his knights.

The first scraplet felt as if he was on fire, but in a good way, he felt the power of his king flowing through him, and he felt POWERFUL! He felt like he had been upgraded, which is exactly what was happening. Greg was using the same method he used to upgrade the computer system, to upgrade the Auto-scraplets. Their bodies filled out, becoming vaguely triagonal, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. The large, pure blue eyes bent, becoming more angular, with a distinct pupil, and said pupil having a dull red hue. The mouths of the scraplets shifted on their heads, shifting to the bottom of their chins, while the head itself took on a broad shape, with a wide back to it. A small fin sprouted up on the forehead of the knights.

The teeth remained the same, but the actual mouth shape changed a bit, with mandibles emerging from four points of the mouth, and able to fold up, to cover the mouth entirely.

The arms of the scrapmaker knights were thick, yet lean. With a tall shoulder pad on the left shoulder, with the right shoulder looking like the shoulder pad of a Samurai.

The forearms of the knights had large blades that jutted out of the wrists of the arms, with the end of the blade reaching a few feet past the elbow. The hands bore four digits, each of which had a claw at the end.

The legs of the knights were long, with a backwards knee, ending in large, three clawed feet. The lower legs bore a resemblance to ancient knight armour. The long, sharp points of the toes, had the swirling etching of celtic runes, sprawling along the bridge of the toe. The same decals could be seen on the claws on the knight's hands, and on their arms.

The scrapmaker knights let out furious roars, as this new upgrade would allow them to save their friends.

" **MY BROTHERS! I, SKYRUNNER, WILL LEAD YOU TO VICTORY! FOR OUR KING!"**

The newly named Skyrunner proclaimed, as he charged forwards, willing the blades connected to his wrists to snap out, extending further to cover his hands, and reaching the floor with the way he stood. His many brothers gave a rallying cry of agreement, eager to please their king, and charged forwards, their blades extending.

Ratchet was in a world of pain, both blind and deaf to the world, as the little monsters ate away at him. But he did hear the vicious battle-cry of many, smaller voices, and suddenly, Ratchet's attackers were being ripped off of him. When he could finally see, Ratchet turned his head to see over a hundred small, Cybertronian knight-like creatures, with large blades for hands, slashing at the scraplets that covered Bulkhead from head to toe. Looking at Bumblebee, Ratchet saw that he looked like scrap, his mesh was covered in gashes, and his doorwings looked mangled, but he was otherwise alive.

" **Good medic, are you alright?"** An unfamiliar voice asked Ratchet, who whirled around to see one of the knights looking up at him, his head reaching just below the medic's knee.

"Y-Yes. I am fine." Ratchet replied, " But where are the red scraplets? Did you kill them? And who are you anyway?" The medic asked.

The Knight in front of the CMO gave a chuckle,

" **Good medic, all three of your questions have the same solution. We, the scrapmaker Knights, ARE the red scraplets. I, Skyrunner, was the scraplet that the young human held in his arms. As to how we came to be like this,"** Skyrunner gestured to his new body, **"You have our king to thank for that."** Skyrunner then pointed to Greg, who was fussing over Bumblebee.

" **Now, I believe that it may be best to activate the… as you say, 'ground-bridge'? Lest your leader perish?"** Skyrunner suggested. The medic blanched for a second, before nodding, moving over to the bridge controls. As the medic activated the controls, Skyrunner moved towards his king. Greg noticed his approach, and turned from Bumblebee to address the knight.

Skyrunner bowed to his king,

" **My lord. We are all relieved to see that you are unharmed from this skirmish. Some of us feared the worst.** " Greg smiled towards the knights, these knights were clearly loyal to the end, if their worry was anything to go by.

" **Thank you, Skyrunner. Your loyalty is to be commended. I am fine, though."** Greg replied to the aforementioned knight. Skyrunner smiled at his king, though the only way to tell was the movement of his eyes, as his mouth was on the underside of his head.

His king was very kind. Skyrunner extended his left arm, his hand open,

" **My king. We, the Scrapmaker Knights, are yours to command. This we pledge, with all our sparks."** Greg smiled, and grasped Skyrunner's arm, giving him a warrior's handshake.

This was the scene that Optimus Prime and Arcee came back to. Optimus gave a quick look at all his troops, finding them to be in disrepair, with long gashes covering them. Jack and Ratchet appeared to be the worst off, while Cliffjumper was the best off.

"Cliff! Jack! Greg!" Arcee cried, rushing over to envelope the two techno twins in a hug, with Cliffjumper limping over to embrace her too. Optimus gave a small, rare smile at the tender scene, before turning his attention to the small, strange Cybertronian being that had clasped Greg's arm, before stepping back to give Arcee space to hug the two half humans.

"I do not believe we have met, what is your name, young warrior?" Optimus asked the strange creature, that Optimus realized, was not alone. Over a hundred of these beings sat or stood in various places around the base.

The strange being smiled, before it spoke in Cybertronian,

" **I am called Skyrunner, and we are the Scrapmaker Knights. We were created by our King, the one you call Greg, to defend your unit against the hoard of scraplets that we were originally apart of."** The prime blanched at the words that Skyrunner had said, scraplets?

"Greg. is what he says true? Did you create these, Scrapmaker Knights?" The prime asked, to which the boy in question only nodded his head,

" **Yes Optimus, I upgraded their bodies to give them the advantage against the scraplets that were eating away at us. But they had sided with us long before then, they had helped Jack hold the line to defend the rest of us, while I was recovering from injuries from the other scraplets, and Miko and Raf were fixing the breach in the energon line."**

Greg suddenly twitched, his eyes flashing yellow,

{Injuries detected, medic mode engaged}

Greg leaped forwards, grabbed Arcee's servo, and with shocking strength, dragged her to the medical bay, much to her protest.

"Greg, Greg! Greg, I am a grown femme, I can walk myself to the med bay. GREG STOP DRAGGING ME!" She protested to the small medic, but to no avail. The others chuckled at her miss fortune, except for Ratchet and Optimus, as they knew what was coming next. The bots heard Arcee being magnetized to a berth, to her venomous protest, then suddenly, six tendrils came flying out of the medbay, each grabbing the arm of one of the six injured Cybertronians; Jack, Cliffjumper, Ratchet, Bulkhead, Bumblebee, and Optimus. With a sharp tug, the tendrils dragged most of them to the medbay, the only exceptions being Optimus and Ratchet, who didn't try to resist. Everyone knew that Greg was in full medic mode, so protesting or fighting back would be pointless, but it made them feel better anyway. Once Greg had magnetized everyone onto a berth, he got to work repairing them. Jack and Cliff were arguably the easiest, as like Greg, Jack has a self-repair system, as their metal was much like their human skin. Cliff was also easy because the scraplets didn't target him that much, and his injuries from the arctic had all but disappeared. As Greg applied a form of liquid metal to seal the gaps in Cliff's armour, Miko and Raf approached him.

"Anything we can do to help?" She asked.

Greg looked over Miko and Raf for a few seconds, before he gave a raspy sigh, and spoke in the monotone voice that was his medic mode's form of communication,

" **Very well, human."** Miko flinched at that, an action not noticed by the bots, **"apply an electropulse monitor onto Bulkhead. Monitor his vitals, DO NOT allow his electropulse to fall under 3.159. If it does, alert me immediately. Raf, take this vial, it contains liquified Cybersteel. Use it to repair Bumblebee's left arm. DO NOT use it for anything else."** Raf gave a determined nod, and accepted the vial from Greg, before climbing up Bumblebee's legs, being careful to not injure the scout more than he already was. Miko hesitated, before she made her way to the tools that Greg had pointed towards. With further instruction for Ratchet, Miko had the electropulse monitor hooked up to Bulkhead, proud that she was helping her big guardian. Bulkhead gave a small smile, something that Miko returned, as she climbed up to rest on the big, green bot's shoulder.

Raf had trouble with his task, simply because the berth was at an angle, and he was having trouble finding footing. Bumblebee was very accepting of Raf, as he struggled to find a proper foothold, so he could repair the wound. Bee was surprised that the young human would want to try to help him, he would have thought the boy would be scared to see the wounds that peppered the scout, but surprisingly, the boy was being very brave, and took the challenge to fix his friend. The scout found it sweet, the determination he saw on his charge's face. Suddenly, the berth was being leveled out, with Raf stumbling to find balance, and ending with Bumblebee being horisontal now. Raf looked at the edge of the berth, to see Greg, still in medic mode, with multiple tendrils extending from his back.

The young medic mad his way over to Bee's right arm, and began to check multiple pieces of the scout's plating.

" **Open your arm. Deploy a weapon."** The young medic commanded, and Bumblebee compiled, or at least, he tried. But when the scout went to deploy his blaster, he found that he couldn't… the plating would move, but his weapon wouldn't deploy.

" **I….. I can't!"** The scout yelped, panic clear in his tone. The scrapmaker knights, who had gathered around the berths, to watch their king work, and a few to receive minor repairs once the bots where all safe, growled softly, clearly angry at the scraplets who had attacked the young scout.

Greg's eyes flashed red for a split second, before he deployed his tendrils. Gently pulling apart the scout's plating, so that it was still attached to him, he gradually pulled out the sparking, twisted remains of Bumblebee's twin wrist blaster.

Greg clicked his tongue, shaking his head,

" **Absolutely unsalvageable. Removal is necessary. You have my sympathy, scout."**

Bumblebee flinched, to hear that he would lose a part of himself was… defeating to say the least. But Bumblebee was brave, he knew that the blaster would have to be removed to allow his arm to heal. Giving the medic a nod, Bee prepared for the worst.

Greg formed a needle out of his hand, and applied a sedative to the yellow scout's arm, just above the forearm.Bumblebee felt a small prick, before his entire arm went numb. With confirmation that his patient was properly prepared for operation, the young hybrid medic went to work. With the bulk of the weapon in his tendrils, Greg was able to easily detach the broken gun from the scout. With the gun in tendril, Greg gently pulled the energon line that fueled the device. When it came clean, Greg sealed up the open remains of the line, so the scout wouldn't bleed to death. With that out of the way, the medic dropped the weapon, and put the scout's plates back together, almost like they were never damaged in the first place. With the hardest part done, Greg began to seal up the gaps in Bee's armour.

Cliffjumper leaned over to Ratchet, and whispered so that Greg couldn't hear,

"Have you noticed how blunt Greg is when he's like this?" The elder medic sighed, he had indeed noticed that Greg, while in medic mode, was very blunt and to the point, to the extent where even his voice was without emotion.

"Cliffjumper, most medics who possess the ability of medic mode, suffer from glitches. It's simply how the programing works. The glitch varies from medic to medic, but depending on the class of medic, certain glitches can be expected. For example, some mini-con medics have intense stutters when they are in medic mode, while some standard Cybertronian medics have physical kinks. I can get violent when in medic mode, to the point where i throw wrenches at my patients." The elder medic explained, earning wide optics from the red mech, as well as Arcee, who was on the berth next to Cliff.

"So that's where the whole story from Sideswipe about the wrench throwing comes from? I thought he just talked your audio receptors off…" She said.

Ratchet shook his head, "He did talk all the time, i might have launched a few while I wasn't in mode, but you can hardly blame me. But we are rather fortunate that Greg's glitch simply appears to be a voice quirk."

Arcee nodded, the new knowledge about what medics could suffer from made her all the more worried about Greg, despite the whole dragging thing.

Skyrunner chuckled quietly at the conversation he was listening to, these Autobots sure were funny. But his mirth quickly faded as he looked at the Autobot scout, Bumblebee. To lose such a vital part of one's self would definitely be traumatic, and said lose would hinder him in the field. Once the Decepticons learned that the scout was only packing one blaster, things would get very hard for him.

Skyrunner made a mental note to speak with his king later, about crafting a replacement for the scout, if they could. In the meantime, the knight simply watched as his king slowly healed the wound of the yellow Cybertronian. The king was elegant, with his long tendrils dancing around him as he cut pieces away, and applied the cybersteel to allow it to regrow.

Once the scout was repaired, Greg moved on to his next patient, his elder, Ratchet.

The bigger medic suffered only mesh wounds, but he was covered in them, to the point that Greg could barely make out his paint. With a sigh of exasperation, Greg formed Cybersteel injectors on the ends of his tendrils. With a grunt of effort, Greg plunged his injectors into different areas of his colleague, his neck, his left shoulder plate, right forearm, and each of his knees. Greg also pulled himself up, using the injectors as a climbing tool, and placed himself utop Ratchet's chestplate. Once there, he flipped out another injector from his left arm, and jabbed it into the center of the chestplate. Ratchet gave a small grunt as the injectors pierced his frame, but almost immediately felt better, as the cybersteel fluid swept into his frame. The miracle liquid filled the gaps in his armour, and his body gradually began to integrate the foreign metal into himself.

" **My king, would it not make more sense to upgrade a few of us knights once more? If you can make a few of us into medic frames like yourself, it would greatly improve repair time."** Skyrunner suggested. Greg looked at him for a moment, before nodding. Having finished Ratchet's repairs, the king of the Scrapmaker Knights dropped from the berth that his fellow medic was magnetized to. Greg walked towards Skyrunner, before he held up his hand, emphasizing his five digits.

Skyrunner understood his meaning, and turned to address the knights,

" **The king require 5 volunteers to become medics like himself. The first five to approach will be chosen."**

The knights seemed to converse amongst each other, before five warriors close to Skyrunner stepped forwards. Skyrunner nodded in satisfaction, before turning to his king,

" **My lord, they are ready."** He said to his king, who nodded, and prepared his tendrils. Five tendrils shot forwards each grasping a knight, who had saluted their king as he did so. As Greg let his energy flow through the Knights, they began to shift. Their armour flared out, as gears were heard to shift, before the armour folded back into place. The only changes to them, was the red cross that imprinted itself of their right shoulder, and four spherical indents in their backs. As Greg put his newly reformatted medics down, he sighed heavily. This was the third time that Greg had upgraded something today, and he was tired. With the new medics quickly running through their new programing and equipment, Greg felt himself turn back to normal, as he slipped out of medical mode.

The young medic collapsed to the ground, certain that his new medics will heal the bots. The new scrapmaker knight medics turned to their king, hesitant to leave him, but he shook his head,

" **Heal the Autobots. I will be fine, im just tired."** Greg's mental voice rang out. The medics nodded, and turned to their new patients. The first medic approached Optimus, giving him a quick check over, finding any large spots of frozen metal, and holding a welder they created from their arm, close to the cold spots, warming the metal enough to soothe the prime's pain. The second medic turned its attention to Arcee, who received the same treatment as Optimus.

The third medic walked up to Bulkhead, who was in pretty bad shape, his frame covered in gashes, and his left arm was dangerously close to falling off. The medic figured it would be practical to fix the arm first, and deployed the upgrades the king gave it. Long tendrils emerged from the medic's back, much like the king's own extensions. Two of the tendrils latched onto the lower half of the wrecker's arm, while the other attached to the shoulder plate. Pulling itself up to the joint, the knight medic deployed it's welder, and with the help of the fourth medic, began to weld the joint shut. Once the basic joint was repaired, the plating around said vital component was restored and reinforced, for a little extra protection, this was the toughest Autobot asides from the prime himself after all, he took a lot of punishment on a regular basis.

Thanking the other medic for it's assistance, the third medic set its sights on the final patient, the brother of the king, who was being worked on by the fifth medic. The third knight watched as few wounds that were still on the mighty warrior were being welded shut.

Shaking itself out of its stupor, the third medic resumed its repairs on the green mech. All the while ignoring the bombardment of questions that the small human perched on the mech's shoulder was flinging at it. Said mech chuckled at the irritated expression on its face.

Once the repairs were complete, the knight medics turned their attention to their king, who was relaxing on the couch of the living area. Seeing that the king had no visible wounds, the medics decided to return to the rest of the ranks of knights that filled the base.

This caused the autobots to finally realize just how many new bodies where in the base.

"Skyrunner, I am unsure that we are capable of acquiring enough metal for all of the scrapmaker knights.." Optimus began, only for Skyrunner to laugh, it was a short laugh, almost bark like,

" **Optimus, you needn't worry about food for us, our king upgraded our energon converters, into something much like what lies within both he and his brother. Anything we eat would be converted into energon, which means we no longer HAVE to eat metal to survive."**

Skyrunner turned his head to glance at the rest of the autobots who were still in the medbay,

" **So you needn't worry about being eaten anymore."**

The autobots let out small chuckles, and even Optimus cracked a small smile.

Jack let out a small sigh,

"Can someone unmagnetize the berth please?" He asked, to which the other Autobots agreed with. Shaking his head, Skyrunner nodded to one of the knight medics, who jumped over to the medbay. Using its tendrils, the medic pressed the buttons on the berths, which deactivated the magnetism.

The bots felt the magnetic hold over them siese, and Jack slid a few feet before he planted his feet, then launched himself over to the living platform. As he landed, he turned to Raf, who was sitting next to Greg on the couch, and ruffled his hair,

"You and Miko did good, fixing the power line." the older boy said.

Raf blinked, before he smiled, and hugged Jack. Greg chuckled as best he could, finding the scene sweet. Jack rolled his eyes, knowing full well what Greg was doing, before he grabbed Greg's arm,

"Yeah, yeah. Get over here Darth Vader." Greg glared at his brother for the comment, and lightly smacked him on the head with a tendril, before he retracted his extensions, and joined the hug.

Miko sighed sadly as she was the three boys have their hug. In truth she felt very left out, she couldn't even understand the awesome looking Scrapmaker knights, because they spoke a strange language she couldn't even comprehend. The large head of her guardian, and current perch swiveled to look at her, clearly he had heard her sigh.

"What's wrong Miko?" he asked, his deep voice helping Miko to calm herself before she said anything,

"It's nothing Bulk, really. It's just that…. I feel left out. That's all. Greg and Jack can both do so many amazing things, I mean, you saw what they did today. Raf can hack into government agencies, and do all this amazing computer stuff, and he can understand Bumblebee, and probably the knights too. And then there's me. I can't do any of that stuff. Im useless…"

Bulkhead blinked, he hadn't realized that she was thinking like that.

"Miko, you are not useless. Just look at what you have done already. You sealed the breach in the energon line, without you, Optimus and Arcee would have died." The large mech tried to soothe his charge, but to little effect,

"Raf sealed the breach. I didn't" Miko said dejectedly, looking down and avoiding Bulkhead's face. Bulkhead sighed, and lifted a finger to gently lift her head,

"But you protected him while he did it. If you hadn't, he could have been attacked by the scraplets. Don't beat yourself up about these things Miko, someday soon you'll get your chance to really shine."

Miko smiled at her guardian, taking immense comfort in his words. Bulkhead always knew just what to say to make her feel better, even though they had only known each other for a few weeks.

"What Bulkhead says is correct, Miko. While Greg and Jack have unique biology, and Rafiel is very smart, you have your own strengths that cannot be denied. You are just as strong as everyone else in the room, you kept calm during the scraplet invasion, and assisted in rescuing myself and Arcee. You are stronger than you realize, young Miko."

Optimus spoke in calm, soothing tones to the upset girl. Miko looked up at the large, red mech with tears in her eyes,

"Thanks Big Rig. that means a lot." She said. While the others chuckled at her nickname for the leader, said leader smiled back at the young girl, his optics warm. There were many qualities in Miko that reminded Optimus Prime of Elita-1. She was brave, with an unbreakable fire in her. Optimus couldn't help but relate Miko to his Spark-mate, not in a romantic scene, but rather in a parrental. Optimus could truly see Miko as Elita's child.

Shaking the thought away, Optimus turned to Ratchet, who was trying to instruct the medic knights to ensure that the repairs would stay. Chuckling at the incredulous looks the knights were giving the old medic, the prime put his servo on his shoulder,

"Perhaps you should rest old friend. A great many lives have been saved today."

Ratchet nodded,

"Indeed Optimus. We are most fortunate that this infestation happened, on a Saturday."

AN: I feel like my challenge to double the word count with each chapter is going to kill me… anyway, i hope you guys liked this chapter, and let me know if you have any ideas for new bots or cons. I have my list, but i can always add more, even OCs.

Endario out.


	6. Chapter 6 ConJob

It had been a few days scene the Scraplet attack, and things had gone smoothly since. With the introduction of the Scrapmaker knights into the Autobot fold, there was need to inform Agent Fowler about the addition to the forces. His reaction when he first arrived at base, and saw a knight had everyone chuckling a bit. But after everything was sorted out and explained, Agent Fowler agreed to inform his superiors about the new additions. With this sorted out, the Knights started to make their home in the base. Having been given a large room by Optimus to serve as their nest, the knights began to shape the walls and ceiling to feel more like home to them. Using scrap metal, some of which may have been leftover scraplet bodies from the infestation, the knights began to build a twisting sculpture in the center of the room.

The bots and humans haven't been allowed to enter, as the knights were still working, they only allowed their king to enter. Greg helped where he could, but mostly sat back and gave advice to the knights on ideas they could use to help make their home. One such suggestion was to make a berth for himself in the hive, to which the nights full heartedly agreed to.

Arcee, Cliff and Jack were still coming to terms with the fact that Greg was now the king of an entire species, but they were progressing quickly.

Something else that the Autobots had to realize was the fact that all the knights, Greg included, were telepathic towards each other. Once this was realized, however, the bots had an idea. With Jack's help, Greg was still recovering his energy from all the upgrades he had made over the last few days, four scrapmaker knights were given cloaking technology, and assigned to watch over Miko and Raf, while still respecting their privacy. These knights were given names by their human charges, something that they had honestly not expected, as the knights had cultural similarities to other insectoid Cybertronian races, where only specific beings who were renowned for something, or had achieved something great would be named.

The names were as follows,

Miko's knights were named Ghrian and Gealach respectively. Raf's knights were named Vendaval and Tormenta. The four knights were honored to be named by their charges, no matter what their names meant, but were happy to hear the translations.

Speaking of translations, Jack had worked with Skyrunner to create a translator for Miko, so she could understand her Knights. The translator was a small device that plugged into her ear, with a small visor that could be flipped out to show the translations she was hearing. She was thrilled, and started bombarding her knights with questions, and the knights asked questions back with equal vigor.

{time skip}

Greg awoke from his recharge, and looked around him, at the large nest his knights had built. The main column in the center of the room was thick, like the trunk of a tree. From this large trunk, spread out smaller branches of metal, with indents designed for the knights to rest on. There were two rooms in the back of the nest, which the knights had erected, much to the confusion of Greg. when he had asked about them, Skyrunner had told his that they were for the next generation of knights. Skyrunner had also made mention of that soon, a new wave of knights would arrive, much to Greg's shock, and joy.

Shaking his head to get that thought out of his head, Greg made his way through the nest, careful to not disturb the sleeping knights around him. Once he made his way to the door of the nest, Greg gave his greetings to the guard at the door, before being let through.

As Greg made his way to the Energon storage for his morning energon, he met up with his guardians and brother.

" **Morning guys."** Greg thought with a yawn. Cliffjumper chuckled,

"Well, well. Look who finally joined us." He said sarcasm and mirth oozing from his voice box. Greg gave the maroon mech a glare, before grabbing his energon cube, something that Cliff protested to.

" **Hey, if you want to be an ass, you can get another cube."** Greg thought, his mental 'voice' was snarky, almost sardonic. Cliffjumper glared at his small charge, before he sighed and got up to get another cube.

Arcee and Jack laughed at his misfortune, finding the situation hilarious. Once Cliff had returned with his replacement cube, the four began to drink, Greg and Jack taking time to savour the taste of the sweet liquid. Once the four were done, they headed to the wash-racks to clean themselves and their armour. Jack and Greg enter to another door next to the wash-rack, a small dual shower that the autobots had build for the two techno-organics, and for Raf and Miko, should they ever need it. The shower stalls were small, but more than enough for the two to fully clean themselves.

Once the four were sufficiently clean, they made their way to the main hub. Once they were there, Arcee grabbed the sidecar upgrade the boys had made her. The boys climbed up to the living area, and grabbed themselves a quick bite to eat, along with their lunch. Once the armour was secure, and fully linked to her systems, and the boys were ready, Arcee shifted to her vehicle form, allowing the boys to climb on, with Greg in the driver's seat, and Jack in the sidecar. The two young boys waved to the bots there, Cliffjumper and Ratchet, and Arcee started her engine and drove out the base door.

The drive to the town was quiet, the only sound being the hum of Cee's engine, or the occasional car on the road. Along the way, the three met up with Bulkhead and Bumblebee, with Raf, Miko and their knights in their interior. With Arcee as the lead, Bee on her left, and Bulk on the right, the trio of vehicles formed their usual pattern. Once the had reached the school, Jack jumped out of the sidecar, while Greg simply dismounted. Bee's door opened to allow Raf and his knights, invisible of course, while Bulkhead' trunk was opened, and to the un-knowing, for no reason. But to those who knew, it was so Miko's knights could exit. Said girl popped out of Bulk's passenger door, and rushed to catch up with her friends.

With the brothers in front, Raf to the left, miko to the right, and the knights on either side, the group took their usual formation. As the group reached the school doors, the knights waited for their charges to enter, before hurrying after them. Once inside, the knights quickly climbed onto the roof, to remain undetected, and the group made their way to their first class, which they all shared, math.

" **Remember miko, my knights are here to watch over the two of you, not for you to do with as you please. While outside of the base, or a bot, they must remain cloaked. Understand?"** Greg thought, his mental projection having been limited to the four of them, and the knights that followed them. Miko sighed dramatically, before nodding,

"Yes Greg, I know. I'm not stupid" She snapped at the young king. Greg stumbled for a second,

" **I never said that you were… I was just reminding you to be careful. And before you ask, it's because this is the only class i have with you, and wanted to remind you before I forgot."** Miko flinched, before muttering a quiet apology.

By now the four, plus two, had made their way to the classroom. Once they had seated, the brothers quietly took note of the classroom, spotting who was there, and who wasn't. They had originally started this as a way to practice their telepathy, but it has become a game between the two of them to pass the time. They had noticed that Vince was staring at them, specifically at Greg. The two of them looked at each other, confused as to why he was starring in shock, before Jack looked at his brother's arm. It wasn't disguised!

" **Shit…"** Greg thought, **"How did we forget, brother? Mom made us do that checklist since we were 5! How did we forget?"** Greg was panicking, racking his brain to discover why he blew their cover.

"D-Darby?" Vince asked, his voice faint. The fear in his usually brash voice caused everyone to look at the two boys, and inevitably, Greg's metal arm. Some of the girls screeched, one of the guys threw up, and most just sat there shocked.

"What the fuck Darby!?" Vince yelled, and at that exact moment, the math teacher, Mr Murama walked through the door.

"Vince!" The teacher yelled, "What is the reason for such language?!" The teacher glared at Vince, who winced when he realized that he was probably in trouble,

"But Mr Murama! Greg's arm, it's gone!" Vince all but shreaked, and the teacher wheeled around to look at said young man. The elderly math teacher gasped as he saw that Greg's arm was indeed, no longer flesh. Greg put his hands up, in a calming gesture, but this only caused people to freak out again. Greg winced as he realized that his arm was far more sophisticated than any prosthetic known to man. The joints were too smooth, the fingers too articulate. He was dead.

Greg, thinking quickly, let his power surge through him, before it ripped out of him in a large wave of energy. Everyone the energy touched fell silent, and was still like a statue. Greg focused his energy, feeling the mystic force within him retract from his brother, their friends, and the knights on the ceiling. With the energy leaving them, the seven of them slowly shook themselves, Jack recovering the fastest. When he looked around, he chuckled,

"I wondered how long it would take us to have to do this again, huh brother?" Greg groaned in response.

Miko, who had just recovered from the energies that flowed through her, snapped her head up at what Jack had said,

"Wait a minute. You two have done this before!? What even is this?!" She screeched, earning winces from the two Darby's.

" **Unfortunately yes. Unlike Jack, who's metal is easy to hide, mine isn't. And on more than one occasion, I have lost my concentration, and my hologram has failed. When these things happen, I have to mind-wipe those around me, so they don't remember my arm. Fortunately, it would seem that no one has taken any pictures this time. That is much more annoying to deal with."**

Greg's mental voice was filled with regret. He never wanted to use his powers like that, but he had no choice, it was for the protection of his family.

" **I have had to mind-wipe the both of you before, before you ask."**

This revelation sent a chill down Miko's spine, that she had had her memories wiped clean, by Greg.

MIko turned away, not wanting to look at Greg, anger expressed in her posture. She really wanted to hate Greg for wiping away parts of her life, but she just couldn't. She knew that he did it to protect himself, and his brother. And he clearly regretted his actions, evendent by the sound of his mental voice. He had once told Miko and Raf that he couldn't fake emotions in his telepathy. It was impossible for him to fake emotions in his voice, and that could be dangerous for him. That did not change the fact that Miko was angry, not just at Greg, but it was all being aimed at the young teen.

" **Miko, I do regret the actions I have had to take, but I had little choice. What would you have me do? Expose my brother and myself to the scrutiny of the world? Every moment that someone new knows that we are different, we are in danger. I have to keep myself and my brother safe, and Jack feels the same way."** This got a nod from Jack, who was currently directing Greg's energy flow, memory alteration was a team effort. **"I hope you can find it in yourself to forgive us Miko. i would hate to lose my new sister…"**

What Greg had said struck a chord with the young exchange student, especially the last bit. Did he truly think of her as family? The young girl turned around to see the somber expression on Greg's face, a lone tear sneaking its way past his eye. Miko's anger quickly melted at the sight of Greg looking so upset, he was normally the most calm and collected one of the four of them. Jack was a close second, but was more vocal about his passion. Miko sighed, not being able to stay mad at the boy, and enveloped him in a quick hug. As they parted, Greg gave Miko a kind smile, and limited his telepathy to her only,

" **I am still here to talk, if you need to. Don't forget what I offered before… before the mission with Skyquake."** Greg mental tone shifted at the mention of his dead patient, but kept his soft smile. Giving her a nod, Greg wandered over to his brother to help with the memory tweaking.

{Timeskip}

Aside from the the incident with the memories, the school day went by surprisingly well. Only a few new assignments for the quartette to do. As the four friends exited the doors of the high school, they noticed that the bots were there, and quickly rushed over to greet them.

"Hey Cliff." Jack greeted his guardian, Greg nodding as they climbed into the red Dodge Charger. "Hey kids, how are you two doing?" The Dodge Charger questioned as he rolled his engine over, and back out of his parking spot. Both teens gave non committal shrugs,

"Doing alright. A few hiccups today, but other than that, were good." Jack said, from the driver's seat. Cliff gave a grunt of acknowledgement, as he drove away from the school, heading for the base. With Bumblebee right behind him, and Bulkhead not far behind, Cliff made his way out of the city.

When the trio of bots arrived at the base, the four earthlings exited their vehicle forms, allowing Prime's troops to transform. Once they had done so, Bee picked up Raf, and Bulk did the same with his charge. Bee headed to his room, to spend time with his best friend, while Bulk and Miko reported to Ratchet, who was having the two of them do chores around the base, punishment for breaking ANOTHER of the medics tools. Greg and Jack headed up to the couch, and pulled out their notebooks. Cliffjumper immediately became interested, as these notebooks contained all the ideas the boys had about any upgrades or modifications they had about the bots. This was where Arcee's sidecar came from. Once the boys had learnt that the Cybertronians could modify themselves if they had the proper components, they quickly decided to start to invent new mods for their bigger counterparts. While this ability was somewhat controversial on Cybertron, when the boys had asked around, all the boys agreed that it was necessary for the protection of humankind, and for the Earth. Though some, like Ratchet was less inclined towards being modified, he agreed to help with installing. Provided that the boys created the mods, however.

Ratchet glanced at the boys, before returning to giving Miko instructions on what he needed her to do.

"So brother," Jack started, "Given any thought on what we were talking about in regards to the thrusters?" He asked his medic brother, who gave his version of a sigh.

" **The biggest problem is the energon intake. These things would drain the bots dry before they reach 500 feet. We need a way to minimize the energon intake before we continue to make designs. Another issue is the calibrations of the dilation of the thruster vents."** Was the medics response. Cliff, who was listening to their conversation, was suddenly very interested in these thrusters. If the boys could solve the fuel issue, these things could give the Autobots the advantage they need. The biggest advantage the cons had over the bots, besides numbers, was air superiority, if this could be changed, the bots would have a much easier time fighting back. Looking over at Ratchet, he could see that he was thinking the same thing.

"What if we messed with the fuel inducer alignment? We could also shrink the diameter of the thruster vent itself, but keep everythings else the same, so there is more force. Like a plane engine." Jack suggested. Greg seamed to ponder this, before furiously scribbling in his notebook.

" **The same concepts could also work on the shield and wall…. Maybe the resonators too…. Hmmm we need a lab. And materials."** Greg muttered to himself as he scribbled. Cliff gave a chuckle at the antics of his charge, finding the scene funny. Greg stopped writing, and turned his head to glare at the red mech, who held his servos up non threateningly.

" **I was serious. With a lab our size, we could actually experiment with these kinds of things, help the Autobot cause."**

The red mech was about to say something, but a scrapmaker knight rushed into the room,

" **MY LORD! Come quickly, we require your presence in the hive!"**

The unnamed knight exclaimed, to which Greg jumped up, unfurled his tendrils from his back, and used them to propel himself towards the knight. Using the longer appendages, Greg raced towards the hive, in his mind, Greg was thinking over every scenario that could be happening right now. In short, Greg was losing his mind.

Once they had reached the room that held the hive, the guards quickly allowed them to enter. Greg had expected to see fire, or some sort of monster, but instead he saw every single scrapmaker crowding in front of the two rooms in the back. Making his way over to his knights, Greg noticed the happy expressions on everyone's face. Greg noticed Skyrunner, who had stained his blades dark blue a while ago, standing in front of everyone.

" **Skyrunner! What is going on?"** Greg called out, which got the attention of every knight, who bowed in the presence of their king. Skyrunner looked overjoyed to see his king, letting out a bark of laughter,

" **My king! A happy day, this is. Please, come here, and witness the dawn of a new generation!"**

And with Skyrunner's proclamation, everything suddenly clicked for Greg, and he realized what he was to bear witness to. Greg stepped forwards, and peaked his head into one of the rooms. What he saw was the room almost filled with small metal eggs. Greg's heart swelled in anticipation.

{Timeshift- Pov change: Miko third person}

Miko sat on Bulkhead's shoulder as they walked through one of the base's many hallways, talking as they went,

"Chores are done, finally. Wanna go dune bashing now Bulk?" the fiery asian asked her green guardian. Bulkhead looked apprehensive,

"I don't know Miko. Last time I spent weeks picking sand out of my articulators. Greg was not happy about that one…" he said. Miko huffed,

"Since when does Greg's opinion matter concerning OUR quality time?" she asked, edge to her tone.

"Since he's the one who looks after me and the others when Ratchet can't. You remember he's one of our medics, right? While Ratchet is best at biology and emergencies, Greg is our go to for regular repairs and maintenance. He checks our tire pressure, and helps to keep us clean, scrap, a couple days ago, i saw him waxing Prime! Hes really good at fixing small stuff, much better than Ratchet ever was. He wasn't happy about helping me wash out all that sand..." Bulkhead responded, wincing at her tone of voice. Miko thought for a second, before shrugging. Taking this as a good sign, Bulkhead asked her if she wanted to watch the monster truck rally. Before Miko could answer, however a loud beeping was coming from Ratchet's workstation. As the other Autobots approached the workbench, Ratchet called out to his prime,

"Optimus, a Cybertronian ship has been detected outside of the Asteroid belt. Faction unknown." The medic turned to his leader, "Should we make contact?"

Optimus nodded, and walked towards the com system,

"Unidentified craft, this is Autobot outpost Omega one, identify yourself." The prime spoke into the com system, to be transmitted towards the ship. What happened next shocked everyone,

" _I've received more warm welcomes from Decepticon blockades."_

Bulkhead blinked at the voice that rang through the coms,

"Jackie?" He asked, his voice uncharacteristically soft, but still caught by the mic.

" _Bulkhead? That you?"_ the stranger asked, and Bulkhead let out a laugh,

"It is you! How you been, Wheeljack?" Bulk asked. The now named Wheeljack let out a chuckle,

" _Been bouncing from rock to rock, looking for more Autobots. What's with all the added security?"_

"This place is crawling with Cons. how soon can you come here and even the odds?" the green wrecker asked.

" _A few days, if i put metal to the petal."_ Wheeljack responded.

As Optimus and Wheeljack switched to a private com, to decide a proper landing zone, Bulkhead turned around, his face exuberant.

"What's with the boyfriend?" Arcee asked, her voice sarcastic. Bulkhead chuckled at the jab,

"Oh me and Jackie go way back, we were part of a team called the Wreckers." Bulkhead explained. Arcee knew who the Wreckers were, but it was nice to get a refresher.

Miko looked up at bulkhead's face, who was looking over the moon right now, and decided that she wanted to meet this Wheeljack. If he was anything like Bulkhead, they would get along famously.

{timeskip}

As the Autobots were preparing for the arrival of their new teammate, Greg was preoccupied with tending to his knights, and their new young. They had hatched shortly after news of Wheeljack's impending arrival had reached the king. While the young did not look like the adults, looking a lot more like the scraplets that they had been originally, Skyrunner assured him that they would grow quickly. So while the others had spent time preparing for the new arrival, Greg tended to his new subjects. When Jack had telepathically called him, saying that Wheeljack was touching down, Greg left the care of the young to the knights, taking Skyrunner with him to meet the new Autobot.

As the two made their way into the command center, they heard Bulkhead,

"Con scum!" He yelled. The others had expressions displaying similar thoughts.

" **What's going on?"** Greg asked, to which Arcee answered him,

"The cons are attacking Wheeljack." her tone was harsh, with clear hate in her optics.

Ratchet opened the ground-bridge, and Bulkhead was the first to charge through, with Greg and Skyrunner close behind. the other Autobots followed shortly afterwards.

When the king and his commander made their way through the bridge, they mere met with the site of a large, cube like, white ship. The ship belonged to the equally white Autobot who was currently engaging a small horde of vehicons. With a shout of rage, Bulkhead tore through one of the cons, who was about to attack Wheeljack from behind. Said Wrecker turned around at the noise, but a smile made its way onto his face as he saw his old Wercker friend.

"Bulk!" Wheeljack exclaimed, clapping the big, green mech on the shoulder. Said Wrecker gave a short laugh, grabbing the white bot around his shoulders, turning him towards the Autobots who had just came through the groundbridge.

"Guys, Meet Wheeljack." Bulkhead announced, with Greg and Skyrunner climbing up the green mech to get a better look at the new mech. Wheeljack stepped forwards, to come to stand face to face with Optimus,

"Optimus Prime, it's an honor." The mech said, his optics warm. Optimus called Ratchet back at base for a ground-bridge, but as they are about to enter, the bots heard the sound of energon blasters going off, and a split second later, an engine was heard.

The bots all turned to see a Cybertronian car, with white paint with green and red highlights. As the car approached, they could all see the Autobot symbol on the hood, and once the vehicle had reached them it transformed to reveal…

"Wheeljack!?" Bulkhead exclaimed, his optics wide in confusion.

"Everyone! Get away from him! He's a shifter!" The new wheeljack exclaimed, but it was too late. Before anyone had the chance to act, the first Wheeljack rushed towards Bulkhead, and grabbed Greg off of his shoulder. With Greg firmly in his servo, the first Wheeljack began to shift. The once white armour began to shake, and compress, his shoulders sprouting prominent spikes, all the while turning shades of purple and black. Two large wings sprouted from his back, and his face bore a mouthguard. His optics were devoid of colour, and he looked very angry.

Not wasting a second, the shifter jumped into the air, and shifted into his arial form. The jet form he took was small, and streamlined, but had an impressive wingspan.

"GREG!" Cliffjumper yelled, as the shifter took off with the young medic, a loud boom was heard as he broke the sound barrier.

Wheeljack made to move forwards, to comfort the red mech, but he stumbled and collapsed. It was then that the Autobots noticed that he had many wounds covering his body, some clearly caused by torture. The bots all gasped at the extent of wounds on the Wrecker. Optimus quickly called base,

"Ratchet, prepare the medbay, now."

The six bots and Skyrunner made their way through the still open groundbridge, with Bulkhead dragging his exhausted comrade through the bridge.

The site that the bots came back to was shocking indeed. The Scrapmaker knights were all in the main hub, chittering angrily. Jack had plugged himself into the main terminal, and was shocking Ratchet with a downgraded version of the techvolt cybertronian taser-cannon, whenever he tried to take the console back.

"Optimus! Thank the Allspark. It's a mutiny, I tell you, A MUTINY!" Ratchet cried.

Ghiran, Gealach, Vendaval and Tormenta all glared at the medic, from their position over the children, forming a form of shield around the young children.

"It's no mutiny, Optimus, their just angry, and so am I. Just have Ratchet take Wheeljack to the medbay, oh, and leave the knights alone, their testy right now." Jack's voice was tense, his irritation just barely hidden as he scrolled through pages of data.

Ratchet turned to the prime, beckoning him as he set down the wounded Autobot on one of the medical berths.

"I just don't know what happened," the medic said, "everything was fine, then all of a sudden, Jack was punching the wall, and the knights came rushing out of their hive. Then Jack jumped at me, shoving me away from the main terminal. I feared they had gone mad, so I made to grab Raf and Miko to keep them safe. But four of the knights nearly took my fingers off."

Optimus bowed his head. "The Scrapmaker knights are grieving, my old friend. Greg was captured, by a decepticon shifter." Ratchet gasped, before sighing. Knowing full well that that explained why both Jack and the knights were aggravated right now.

" damn those Decepticons. They have such better technology than we do. They even have better biology." Ratchet muttered angrily, "And now they…. Have a techno organic…"

the weight of how poorly the Autobots were outmatched in terms of technology compared to the decepticons crashing down on him. Even with the improvements that Greg and Jack had provided, and were continually thinking up, Ratchet had taken their assistance for granted recently. These techno organics would weave wonders with any form of technology, and the medic shuddered to imagine what engines of mass destruction they would build, forcing Greg to act as a catalyst.

"So what do we do now?" Both mechs jumped slightly at the sudden voice of Wheeljack, his voice crackling with static, as he looked at the Prime and medic with focused optics,

"You need to rest, you took quite a bit of damage." the medic responded. Deploying his welder, the medic started to weld shut the numerous gashes and cuts on the white mech.

"With all due respect, doc." Wheeljack started, ignoring the twitch of the medic's optic when he called him doc, "But the cons just got themselves a techno organic. I can't even imagine the weapons they'll make that kid make, we got to stop them."

The Wrecker felt a firm servo rest on his shoulder, and looked up to see the prime,

"Rest assured. We will liberate our comrade from Megatron's clutches. But you have been wounded, badly. Please, allow Ratchet to treat your wounds." The Wrecker nodded, but his optics widened suddenly,

"Wait! Prime," Wheeljack started, "I found three stasis pods after I made contact with you. I hid them in my ship's cargo bay. I don't think the cons found them…" the prime's optics widened a fraction,

"Have you determined their Faction?" he asked, Wheeljack nodded his head,

"All Autobots. One defector. Its Jazz, Blaster and Dirge."

The prime nodded, thanking Wheeljack for informing him and left the medical bay. Turning to look at Jack, working diligently to find his brother. Optimus leaned down to the small Autobot,

"Jack, I understand that you are upset, and I can hardly blame you. But there are Autobots that need your help, could you please reopen the ground-bridge?"

Jack remained silent for a second, and his typing stopped. The young techno organic looked up at his prime, stared at him for a bit, before sighing and nodding. Sliding a tendril over to the controls of the groundbridge, Jack reopened the gate. Optimus smiled at the boy, before motioning for Bumblebee and Cliffjumper to follow him through.

The three bots returned shortly, preceded by a call by the prime through the com link system, carrying with them three large stasis pods. The window in the front was very frosty, so it was impossible to determine the inhabitants, without first wiping the frost clean. The three mech gently wiped at the pod windows, clearing the view for them to see who was in the stasis chambers. Optimus wiped the frost away to gaze at Jazz, an old friend of the prime. Profound music lover, right hand bot of the Autobot cause, skilled in cyber-jitsu, and one of the few lights in the darkness of the war, in terms of humor, that is.

Bumblebee cleaned the window of the stasis pod to find himself face to face with Blaster, an Autobot communication specialist. Blaster was a fun loving bot, but with a very powerful ability. Blaster was one of the few Cybertronians who could split his spark without negative side effects. Both he and Soundwave, the only two living Cybertronians with this ability, used this unique skill to bring multiple small machines to life, naming them the recordicons. These small transformers were used by both to spy on the other faction, and while Soundwave had lost all of his recordicons except his first, Laserbeak, Blaster likely had multiple remaining.

Cliffjumper cleaned the frost to find Dirge, a decepticon seeker who had defected to the Autobots. Dirge had been a fierce follower of the decepticon cause in the beginning, he had agreed with the promises of the silver Gladiator, Megatronus. But as Megatronus became Megatron, his true colours began to show through and Dirge could no longer stomach the revolution. He betrayed Megatron and joined the Autobots, along with a few like minded decepticons.

The three bots activated the stasis pods, and stepped back to let the three bots emerge from them. Jazz and Blaster stumbled out of their pods, while Dirge fell to the floor. The clang that sounded was enough to shake the two stasis grogged bot out of their stupor. Jazz turned to face Dirge, chuckling at the unlucky bot's miss fortune, however, the laughter was quickly hushed when they saw spilled energon flowing underneath the seeker. Optimus picked up the decepticon defector, only to see the massive slash in his abdomen. Ratchet came over -he had heard the loud clang- to see his prime holding the corpse of Dirge. At Optimus' side in an instance, Ratchet deployed his scanner.

"Optimus, it would that Dirge has been dead for quite some time, i'm afraid." he said. The bots present bowed their helms in silence, mourning their comrade. Even Jack, who had never known the seeker, still mourned the loss.

Optimus picked up Dirge's remains, and carried them into the base. Ratchet broke out of his stupor, and ushered Blaster and Jazz into the medical bay.

"But doc-bot! Im fine! Honest." Jazz tried to protest, but was shut up when Ratchet lightly smacked his head with a wrench. The Knight medics snickering at their chief's behavior. Clicking to each other, the five Scrapmaker Medics came to an agreement. The small medics climbed up the berths and medical equipment, making leaps once they ran out of room. Once they had reached the top, the medics signaled for Ratchet, who looked over at them. The lead medic pointed at himself, then his brothers and finally to Blaster. Ratchet quickly got the message, and gave his approval. The five medics gave salutes to Ratchet, before they jumped over to Blaster's berth. Each deploying a frame welder and a diagnostic scanner, the quintet set to word repairing the Autobot.

 **\- {Warning: this part of the chapter will be filled with mature themes like torture and disfigurement. If you have a weak stomach, you may not want to read this part. Skip to the next time skip if this kind of stuff bothers you. Though you may not understand things later if you do skip}-**

Greg stirred in his sleep, only to notice that he couldn't move. Quickly waking up fully, Greg took stock of his surroundings. He was in a large room, with a bright light coming from above him. The walls were a dark grey and purple. Greg realized with a start, that he must be aboard the Decepticon warship. Greg tried to move again, but he was chained to the ceiling. Greg began to struggle, to free himself, but he only succeeded to rattle his chains. The door opened, to reveal a red mech. The mech was of medium height, with a curve to his chest, like two pieces of a hood started at his shoulders and angled their way down to his mid chest. The mech had doors on the sides of his arms, which ended in sharp claws. The mech's face was silver in colour, encased in a red helm.

The mech chuckled at Greg's attempts to free himself.

"Save your energon, hybrid. Those chains are strong enough to hold even Lord Megatron. You won't escape." The red mech said, his vocal patterns smug. The red mech approached the boy, his left servo shifting into a circular saw, "I once knew a techno organic, nice bot. I wonder if you can heal like he could?" he asked, revving his saw for emphasis. Greg paled as realization dawned on him, what this mech was about to do to him.

"You can save yourself a lot of pain, however." A voice rang out from behind the mech, who turned to reveal the mysterious figure to Greg. the figure moved forwards, his primary colour was grey. The new mech had long, thin limbs, with missiles on his arms, and wings flared out in a show of dominance.

"Provided you tell us the location of the Autobot base." the seeker sneared. Greg gulped, before he steeled himself. The young Autobot vigorously shook his head. The seeker growled, before he turned to the red mech.

"Knockout. Begin your interrogation. Keep me posted." the red mech gave an exaggerated bow,

"As you command, commander Starscream." the newly dubbed Knockout said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. Starscream narrowed his optics, before he turned around and walked out, muttering to himself. Knockout turned back to his prisoner, and gave a cruel grin. He walked over to a winch, and used it to pull the chains taunt. Greg gave a grunt as his arms and legs were pulled, to the point he couldn't even twitch without pain. Knockout gave a chain a tug, seemingly satisfied by the pained look on Greg's face.

"Well then, shall we begin? Unless you have anything to say?" Knockout asked, his voice juviant. When Greg didn't say anything, simply braced himself as best he could, Knockout's expression changed from a neutral face to an annoyed expression. Sighing dramatically, Knockout started back up his saw. With a swift movement, the Decepticon drove his weapon towards Greg's leg. Garbled screams came out of Greg's broken vocal chords as his leg was severed. Knockout took his time, almost like he enjoyed every moment he spend tearing into Greg's limb, sometimes even stopping moving forwards just to throw Greg off. Greg's leg finally couldn't take more abuse, and what remained of the lower half of the limb fell to the ground. Knockout deactivated his saw, returning his limb back into his sharp claws, taking a moment to shake his arm, trying to shake off the blood and energon that covered his arm. He watched in fascination as strings of metal and flesh began to entwine together. The jagged edge of bone twitched, before it started to regrow itself. Greg grunted, the process was painful, though no nearly as painful as when Knockout sawed off his leg. The threads of bio-metal wrapped around the bone, slowly but surely building his leg. Soon the only sign that Greg had lost his leg was the uneven length of his pant legs, the blood and energon on the floor, and the missing left shoe. Knockout chuckled,

"Looks like I can do a lot of damage to you, little Hybrid. Even your human half will be kept alive… interesting." Greg's eyes widened, the decepticons knew he was half human? This didn't bode well. Knockout chuckled at the expression on Greg's face, the sick decepticon turned his back towards his young prisoner. The decepticon hummed as he rifled through a plethora of tools and blades on a nearby table. Once he had selected a suitable tool, the red con turned around to allow Greg to see what he had selected. It was a long blade, with one side ceratted, and prongs on the end of the handle. There was a small switch on the handle, which Knockout flipped. Once the switched was activated, the blade began to hum, the edges glowing a soft blue -Energon- Greg realized. Knockout strutted up to his captive, idly turning the blade over in his hands. The decepticon gave Greg a deceivingly sweet smile, before plunging the blade into his gut.

This time, Greg did scream. His way. The mental voice rang throughout the entire ship, the entensity making the drones fall to their knees in agony. Knockout held his servos to his helm, as if trying to silence the voice that rang throughout his head. The blade lost it's leverage, and slipped out of Greg's abdomen, falling to the floor with a clatter. With the source of his pain gone, Greg's wails of pain slowly grew softer, eventually dissipating into hushed whimpering. Knockout regained his equilibrium, before he stormed over to the techno organic. With a angry glint to his optics, Knockout slugged Greg across the face, the force of his large metal fist dislocating the child's jaw. Greg gave a short shout of pain, before Knockout punched him in the gut, irritating the fresh wound that was trying to heal.

"That will teach you to do that." the red decepticon snarled. The door to the room opened, to reveal Starscream, alongside a new Decepticon. The new con was thin, even thinner than Starscream, with long spindly fingers. The most striking part of this new con was his face, he didn't have one. What looked like a screen covered the face.

"Knockout! What in the name of Primus was that?! Soundwave traced the source to this room." Starscream demanded, the mech next to him nodded, his screen coming to life. A diagram appeared of a ship, with a small red dot in the middle of the bottom half of the ship.

"It would appear, commander Starscream, that the techno organic is telepathic. That scream was from when I stabbed it with this." Knockout said, showing the seeker the bloodstained blade. Starscream hummed, before he told Knockout to 'keep the noise down. As the Seeker left once more, Knockout turned his attention to a large machine. The machine was comprised of a large cylinder, with two long tubes connecting to it. The bottom of the machine had a medium sized hole.

Knockout flipped a switch on the device, and it hummed to life. With an evil grin, Knockout grabbed the two tubes and brought them over to Greg. as he attached them to him, Knockout explained what the device was going to do.

"Listen well, organic. This device is going to drain you of your internal Liquid Cysteel formula. It is the essence that allows you to heal wounds, and to create weapons. All Cybertronian life has a limited supply of this, but you have a way to regenerate it. All techno organics do. Essentially, we are going to turn you into a living weapon factory. And it's going to HURT." Knockout said with glee. Greg paled considerably as he was explained what this thing would do to him, and the implications of what it would mean for the Autobots.

With a murderous expression, Knockout flipped another switch, and the machine began it's unholy task. Greg screamed with both his mouth and his mind as the precious resources were slowly drained from his body. Greg felt his bond with Jack wayne and warp, the pain he was feeling was beginning to overpower his control over the bond. The stress proved too much for him, however, and he was forced to share his pain with his brother, lest he risk snapping the bond altogether.

-Scene change- **The torture scene is over now. You can read easy now.**

Back at the Autobot base, Jack was working diligently at the computer terminal, when suddenly, he felt his bond with his brother surge. Unimaginable pain coursed through his bones, Jack felt his metal burn with agony. He was unable to hold in his scream. The Knights in his immediate area rushed over to help the prince. The Autobots heard his scream, and rushed to the room. Even the three wounded Autobots, Wheeljack, Blaster and Jazz limped their way into the command center to see what was wrong with the techno organic. Ratchet paid them no mind, and he focused on his current patient.

"Jack. what's wrong? Where is the pain?" Ratchet asked, his circuits sizzling at the thought of losing both techno organics that wormed their way into his spark.

"I-It-t-s no-ot m-m-me… G-Gre-reg." Jack managed to stutter out before he collapsed due to the pain. Ratchet quickly picked up the boy and did a optical scan. Determining Jack to still be functional, Ratchet took him to the medical bay. As he entered, Ratchet saw that the Scrapmaker medics had finished repairs on Blaster.


End file.
